Water Voices
by EbonyOsmosis
Summary: Updated 8/8/11: Chapter 6. What they thought of as a fun day out can turn into their worst nightmare. Dark, silent, enclosing. Don't trust the voices that speak to you from the depths of darkened corners. Complete with note inside.
1. Down the Rabbit Hole

A/N: What? I started another one?! GRR! I should stop making new stories when I can't finish the old ones in a timely manner! I drive myself nuts sometimes, I really do, but I feel like this one's gonna be a good one! I hope you guys think so too! I've dabbled briefly in supernatural plots here and there, but this one I have a really good feeling about.

- - - -

Water Voices

Chapter 1: Down the Rabbit Hole

- - - -

"_Plain talking (plain talking)  
Served us so well (served us so well)  
Travelled through hell (travelled trough hell)  
We know how it felt (we know how it felt)"_

"_Lift Me Up" – Moby_

- - - -

"This is gonna be great!" Duo proclaimed happily as he strapped on his gear. "I've never been rock climbing before! Well, not recreationally, anyway..." he trailed off thoughtfully, recalling the time he'd been forced to scale a cliff to get away from Oz soldiers.

"Just don't get distracted," Trowa chided softly, pulling on his gloves and making sure they were secure. "We wouldn't want you falling."

"No, we wouldn't want that," Wufei chipped in with a smirk, clapping a hand on Duo's shoulder.

"Of course not," the brunette returned playfully, poking the Chinese boy in the chest. "You'd just be _torn up _if anything happened to me, right?"

"Most definitely," Wufei replied in mock concern, shoving the braided boy when he started laughing. "Get a move on, Maxwell, I want to go sometime today."

"It's too bad Quat and 'Ro couldn't make it," Duo said with a pout, putting on his sunglasses to shade his eyes from the bright sun. The three of them were on a rock climbing trip that Quatre himself had suggested, but it turned out the blonde couldn't make it, so he insisted that they go ahead with the plans. Heero was just too swamped with part time Preventer work and being Relena's bodyguard. So that left just Duo, Trowa and Wufei.

They'd come to a somewhat remote location that Duo had been told about by a co-worker in the auto shop he worked at. The older man had described it as a great place to get out for some fresh air, with a lot of history to the spot that had Duo interested. Some people described it as an area where great spiritual energy converged, a good place to cleanse and heal the soul. Still those who didn't believe in such matters found the spot to be a great way to refresh the spirit, simply for the ability of the beauty to lift heavy burdens from the mind. There was a great history of native people who'd lived there long, long ago, long before man's colonization of space and even before the first mobile suit had even been dreamt of. Duo had told Quatre of the spot, who suggested they all could use a break and some rock climbing sounded fun. But anyway, three out of five wasn't a bad deal.

"We can always go again," Trowa suggested, double checking all of his gear as they stood around Duo's Jeep. "Make sure everyone has the time off next time."

"Yeah," the brunette agreed with a grin. "That is if you can pull Heero away from his precious Queenie for a few hours," he laughed. "C'mon guys, let's go!"

The three ex-pilots set forward on the trail that led partway up the hill. Where it ended, Duo heard from his co-worker, was a fantastic spot for some rock climbing. They followed the worn path that had been beaten into the grass from many visitors past, pointing out features of the land to each other in interest. Duo had brought his digital camera for such purpose, taking photos from time to time to capture the scenery and bring back to Heero and Quatre. He knew he'd end up sending them to a few other people as well to enjoy for himself later. At one point, he even cajoled Wufei and Trowa into posing for a group photo. Only his nagging and whining broke them, and he happily settled the camera onto a level rock with the self-timer set. He had just enough time in those ten seconds to decide on his pose, but the other two didn't have enough time to prevent the camera from snapping a photo of Duo splayed across their laps with a big grin on his face.

All said and done in the way of sight-seeing, the three found their desired path up the steep, rocky hill in the form of the way less traveled. There was a sign designating it for advanced climbers, and that quickly drew the ex-pilots in. Duo turned to his friends with a devious grin. "Are you guys thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Wufei agreed with a smirk, while Trowa merely nodded his assent with a glint of excitement in his eyes. It was no secret that peace life sometimes got boring, and oddly enough even Quatre had expressed his nagging desire to push things from time to time. With all they'd seen and done, sitting around in an office was just not cutting it. So they chose the advanced path.

Duo led their small pack by heading up first, carving a path up the rocks and boulders as Wufei and Trowa followed him, finding their own footholds. It was a beautiful day to be climbing, a balmy seventy degrees with the sun shining brightly down on them from a blue sky. A perfect day to be doing _anything_ outside for that matter. When Duo reached a particularly large boulder, he scaled it deftly and stood up to observe their progress, enjoying the cool breeze that swept over them. They had gotten pretty high up in only thirty minutes. "Stop for a drink of water?" he called to the guys as they climbed up as well, earning agreements from his friends. The three ex-pilots sat down with their legs dangling over the edge of the boulder, enjoying the picturesque scenery of rolling green hills dotted with rocky outcrops at their peaks. "Sure is pretty out here," Duo breathed, taking out his camera to snap a few pictures.

"It's very relaxing," Wufei agreed, sipping from his water bottle while he observed the landscape.

"Quatre will definitely insist on a second trip when he sees the photos," Trowa added. He knew the blonde would want to see it for himself even more so than before. He needed to get out of that stuffy office and away from those stuffy businessmen.

"Yeah, Blondie's a sucker for this stuff," the brunette said with a grin, taking a swig of his water before recapping it. "On we go?" he asked the other two.

Trowa and Wufei shared a look of agreement before nodding at Duo, who led them on once more. "Man, we need to make this a regular thing, I think!" he said with enthusiasm, hauling himself up a particularly craggy rock face with a pleasant sensation of exertion. It was so nice to get out of the shop for a while, to do something more physical than lying on his back under cars all day. He vaguely remembered something he'd read about exercise releasing endorphins into the bloodstream.

After a good hour of rock climbing, the three ex-pilots came to another small plateau, stopping for a rest. The sun was high in the sky by this time, going on late afternoon, so the lengthening shadows almost hid something interesting. Duo pushed his sunglasses up to rest on top of his head, curiously approaching what looked to be a drawing on one of the larger rocks. "Hey guys, check this out," he called over his shoulder, peering closer at the carving. It looked like a man standing on the surface of a pond of water, making Duo think of the bible stories at the orphanage. "Jesus?" he muttered in humorous skepticism, snorting to himself just as the other two were coming up behind him. He took a step forward to get a better look, but the rock beneath his feet crumbled away, bringing the braided boy down with a shocked yell.

"Duo!" Trowa called in surprise as the brunette fell away with the crumbling rock into a pitch dark hole. He and Wufei ended up following him whether they wanted to or not, as the ground dropped out beneath their feet just a moment later, swallowing them into the dark abyss below.

- - - -

When Duo woke up his head was pounding fitfully, making him groan in protest to the jackhammer in his skull. "Ugh," he mumbled quietly, shifting his arms carefully to push himself up. A layer of dirt and pebbles slid under his gloved hands, but he managed to keep upright. "Trowa? Wufei?" he called hoarsely, pausing to hear a response. When nothing greeted his voice, the brunette tenderly sat himself all the way up, sitting still to wait out the dizziness. "Damn," he whispered to his sore body, fumbling around for his backpack. His groping hands found the pack in the darkness a few feet away, and he pulled it close to look for the flashlight he'd packed.

When he found it, he felt for the switch and squinted against the glaring beam of light that pierced the blackness. After his pupils had adjusted, Duo pointed the flashlight out in front of himself to look for the others. He found Trowa first, lying unconscious on his back, so he scrambled over to the other ex-pilot. "Hey, Tro, c'mon buddy- wake up. Y'okay?" he asked, gently rousing the taller boy into consciousness. Confused green eyes met his own in the dim lighting, blinking a few times to clear his vision. "Hey, you okay Trowa?" Duo asked, helping the European to sit up.

"I think so," the taller boy said, rubbing his shoulder tenderly as Duo began looking for their remaining friend.

"Ah," he said, handing the flashlight to Trowa. "Hold this." Light passed off, he crawled over to Wufei, who was half on his stomach half on his side. He crouched next to the Chinese boy, gently easing him onto his back. "Hey, come back to us Wu," he encouraged softly, rewarded by the fluttering of eyelids to reveal hazy brown eyes.

"Maxwell?" he croaked, sitting up with help from the braided boy. His eyes focused with some effort on a spot just above Duo's left eye. "You're bleeding," he stated in a thick voice.

Duo blinked in surprise and brought ungloved fingers to his temple, smearing through a thick line of blood until he found the cut. As soon as he touched it a stinging pain made him wince and pull the fingers away, finding them coated generously in blood. "Not too bad," he said, wiping the blood on his black cargo pants. "How about you?" he asked Wufei, observing him in the beam from the flashlight. "You okay?"

"As well as I can be after a fall like that," he replied, voice clearing up a bit the more he talked. "You should clean that," he stated, pointing at the cut on Duo's forehead. "We brought the first aid kit, right?"

"I have it," Trowa said, just pulling it out of his backpack. "Come here, Duo." The braided boy obeyed and sat in front of the taller boy, who first wiped away the excess blood with a clean cloth. "This one is going to sting," he warned, dampening a sterile pad with disinfectant.

"Be gentle," Duo joked, holding back a grimace when the cloth was applied to the cut. It stung to high heaven, but he'd had a lot worse. A lousy cut on his forehead was nothing compared to a knife in the gut or a lead pipe to the back of your skull, both of which he'd experienced before. Once the cut was clean Trowa put a large band aid over it, pressing it flat with a gentle hand.

"All done," he said, putting the disinfectant and paper wrappers back in the kit. "Sorry, no lollypop."

"Damn," Duo cursed. "My scheme for candy has failed!"

Trowa chuckled quietly as he latched the first aid kit closed and put it back in his bag. "So what now?" he asked the other two.

Duo gestured for the flashlight and pointed it up when he received it from Trowa, whistling. "Well, we ain't gettin' out the way we came in." That was for sure, seeing as the hole they'd come through was far, far above. They certainly wouldn't be able to climb out without fear of another fall. "Anyone have cell reception?" he asked, not really expecting anything. Everyone checked their phones, but they were too far out to have any bars. "I guess we get moving then," the braided boy said, pointing the torch around until he found a tunnel. "That way."

The three ex-pilots picked themselves up sorely, brushing dirt off of themselves and putting on their bags. "I think we should stick to one flashlight at a time to conserve the batteries," Wufei said. "Also, if we get separated, we'll all have one."

"Yeah, good idea," Duo replied, taking the lead since he had the flashlight. "This'll be something to tell the boys when we get outta here, huh?" the brunette said, trying to keep his voice light.

"You mean _if _we get out of here," Wufei corrected.

Rolling his eyes, Duo sighed in exasperation. "I was avoiding using the word 'if,' but yes, thank you for that."

"Wishful thinking will get us nowhere," Wufei responded with a shrug of his shoulders, even though the braided boy didn't see it. They continued through the tunnel in mostly silence. They had gone maybe forty feet in when Duo noticed something odd on the tunnel wall, drawing him off track.

"Hey," he said to the other two, waving them over with a sense of déjà vu. "Check this out."

The three of them observed what Duo had found curiously, and Trowa was the first to speak. "Looks like aboriginal drawings," he said thoughtfully. "Though who would come all the way down here to make cave drawings?"

"It gives me the creeps, I know that," Duo said in an odd voice, getting chills just looking at it. They weren't your everyday cave drawings, like those that pictured sacrifice or the worship of a god. They were... creepy, was the only thing he could decide to describe it. They pictured a series of symbols, some of them oddly similar to various warning signs in modern society.

"Scared, Maxwell?" Wufei asked teasingly, nudging the brunette with his elbow.

"No," Duo said in defense, still studying the strange pictures. "I'm just getting a weird vibe in here, I don't like it. Remember what happened last time I found a friggin' drawing on the wall?"

"You watch too many horror movies," the Chinese teen dismissed with little concern. "Come on, let's get a move on."

In an odd mixture of reluctance and thankfulness, Duo pulled away from the drawings engraved on the tunnel wall, feeling almost as if he shouldn't turn his back on them. He had long forsaken ghost stories as nonsense, but something about this place was just tickling his sense of danger. Maybe it was just the uncertain terrain, but something was giving him icky vibes all over. Vibes or not, the three moved on further into the darkness, wondering what they'd find.

Their quiet discussion led them to estimate they could go for about five days in the caves with the supplies they had, which consisted of some bottles of water, a packed lunch and dinner for each of them, and the old stand-by the pilots never went without: ration bars. Suddenly they were thankful for their paranoid tendencies to over pack on supplies. They also had extra batteries for the flashlights, the first aid kit, and a blanket each. They'd survived on less. "Well," Duo said after another five minutes of walking. "Anyone want to listen to some music? The quiet is kinda makin' me buggy..."

Though neither of them would say it, Trowa and Wufei felt the same way. They'd started to pick up on the same 'bad vibes' Duo had a ways back, and the silence was putting them on hair-trigger. So they agreed to his suggestion, and Duo pulled out his mp3 player that he'd had molded with a Gundamium casing from a scrap of Deathscythe's armor. He turned on the device and switched it to speaker-mode. Music drifted out of the speaker on the back of the mp3 player, echoing eerily off the walls, but it was a comfort compared to the oppressive silence. Too bad it couldn't make the walking a little easier. All three had various aches and bruises from the fall that made it a pain to trek through the tunnel.

"I hear water," Duo stated suddenly, turning down the volume on his music player so they could better hear the sound. It was indeed that familiar trickle of running water just up ahead. When they reached the source, they discovered a dip in the floor that stretched about ten feet, forming a pool of water. "That's weird," Wufei noted as he approached. "I don't see a source for it."

"Be careful," Trowa warned as they began crossing the water. They placed their steps cautiously, vary of the slippery ground where water had smoothed it over time. Just as they were halfway through, there was a yelp of surprise and a splash as Duo slipped backwards. Wufei, who was behind him, hadn't been close enough to catch the other boy, but he moved forward to help him up.

"Ow," Duo swore. "My _ass!_" he exclaimed, still holding the flashlight and mp3 player in the air to keep them from getting wet.

"Alright, Maxwell?" Wufei asked, helping the braided boy up so he didn't fall again.

"Yeah," Duo grunted, patting the back of his pants gingerly. "My butt hurts and my pants are now soaked, but I'm fine. Thanks," he said to the other boy, giving him an appreciative pat on the shoulder before they set off once more. "I sure as hell want out of this place, though," he grumbled irritably, trying not to walk funny in his soaking pants.

"I agree," Trowa threw in uncharacteristically. It surprised Duo, because it was unusual to hear any of the Impervious Three to ever admit something like discomfort or fear. It really cemented in his mind that this place was spooky, and it was both comforting and worrying to know that he wasn't the only one who thought so. But he didn't say anything about it, merely trudged on beyond the pool of water and back onto dry land. After another five minutes, a chill breeze eased through the tunnel, putting them all on alert.

"Do you think there's an exit nearby?" Duo asked the other two, shivering because of his wet clothes.

"Very possible," Trowa mused. "Judging by the strength of that air current, I'd say it's a good chance that's it's a large opening."

"Let's find out," the braided boy declared, hoping that it was a way out. The dark was starting to bug him out big time. The other two followed behind him, just as eager to escape their impromptu prison as soon as possible. They walked a little faster as the air current picked up, feeling freedom practically in their grasp. "I see light!" Duo exclaimed happily, picking up the pace even more until he was downright jogging. They rounded the last corner, coming to an abrupt halt when it proved to be a dead end. The brunette heard a curse from Wufei behind him, but something struck him as odd, so he examined the area a little better, coming to a startling realization. "What... the _fuck_."

"Duo?" Trowa asked curiously, a hint of worry peeking through.

Duo turned to face them, his face a mixture of grim assuredness and fear. Before they even heard him speak, they knew they wouldn't like it one bit.

"This is same cavern we started in."

- - - -

Bum bum buuuummmmm! What will happen next time? You'll have to wait and see!


	2. Rhapsody in Whisper

Water Voices

Chapter 2: Rhapsody in Whisper

- - - -

_"Something's always coming you can hear it in the ground  
It swells into the air  
With the rising, rising sound  
And never comes but shakes the boards and rattles all the doors  
What are we waiting for_

_What are we waiting for"_

"_Believe" – The Bravery_

- - - -

"Impossible!" Wufei exclaimed in bafflement. "We didn't once turn around or deviate from the path! There was only _one _direction to go in!"

"Tell that to my blood over there on the ground!" Duo argued back, pointing the flashlight at a few spots of red liquid, still fresh, from where the brunette had fallen. "And look," he added, pointing the light upwards. It was the exact same hole they had dropped through from the surface above.

"It's impossible," Wufei stated in disbelief. "Point the flash light over here," he instructed, pointing ahead of them to the mouth of the cavern. Duo did as he was told, and the light revealed three sets of footprints all leading out of the area.

"What in the seven rings of hell is going on here?" the brunette whispered, feeling the bad vibes push to the forefront of his mind once more. "There's something screwy about this place. No, _demented. _I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone!"

"Relax," Trowa told them both quietly, obviously trying to be the voice of reason amid his confused friends. "I'm sure we just got turned around." This earned skeptical looks from the other ex-pilots, but there was no other explanation for ending back at their original point of arrival. Anything else brought unwelcome ideas in his head, things he didn't want to contemplate. "Let's just start again," he advised them, gesturing to Duo for the flash light. The braided boy handed it over without thinking, no longer quite so willing to be the leader of their little excursion.

"After you," he told the taller boy nervously, jumping when Wufei nudged him. "Don't sneak up on me!" he scolded, sounding more worried than angry. Feeling rather on edge, the three ex-pilots set off once more in the direction they had already gone. Trowa scanned every inch of the walls and ceiling with the flashlight, not leaving anything to darkness as the passed. Eventually, they reached they set of cave drawings once more. Duo wanted nothing more than to avoid them and keep going, but something told him -those vibes again- to have a look. His eyes widened in surprise when he did, grabbing Trowa's hand to point the light on the drawings.

"They're different!" he hissed in alarm. "That one in the middle!" he said, pointing to an image of a flame being cupped in two hands.

"Your mind is playing tricks on you, Maxwell," Wufei admonished, sounding not entirely certain of his own words. "It was like that before."

"It was not!" Duo told them frantically. "I'm seriously wigging out, guys! There's something _wrong _here!" The entire place had given him a bad feeling from the second he'd woken up on the ground, something cold and haunted that he didn't want to believe at first. Now it was showing up in physical signs that something was seriously out of place in these old caverns.

"Duo," Trowa said calmly, steering the frantic brunette away from the drawings. "They didn't change," he assured in a steady voice, trying to calm down the American. The last thing they needed was Duo having a panic attack, of which they'd only witnessed once before, and once was quite enough. He put a hand on the shorter boy's shoulder and began to nudge him towards their original direction. "Don't worry about it. Like Wufei said, you're mind is playing tricks on you."

The braided boy, to his credit, resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at the drawings. "If you guys say so," he said in an unsteady voice, letting himself be steered away from them. He'd never been so freaked out before in his life, and he didn't even know why he was right that moment. Something was just sending his mind into a tailspin this second journey down the tunnel, and he hated feeling that way. He was so busy worrying that he didn't notice the suspicious lack of water where the floor dipped down...

"SHIT!" he shrieked in surprise as the ground dropped out beneath his feet, finding himself falling down through a hole in the floor with a sickeningly weightless feeling. The tunnel he was descending was incredibly narrow, however, so it didn't feel weightless for long as he started catching on the walls that were so closed in, making his fall rough and painful. He could hear the fading shouts of his friends up above as he descended down through the darkness, finally coming to a stunning halt when he hit a pool of water with a great splash. For a few moments his momentum carried him down deep into the murky water before he regained his senses and started kicking. The water felt suspiciously thick, not like mud or even paint, just a bit thicker than should be normal.

When he broke the surface, he immediately sucked in a lungful of stale oxygen, breathing heavily more from the surprise of falling than being underwater. "Again with the water! Sheesh!" he exclaimed in frustration. He moved to turn on the flashlight, but found nothing. It took him a moment to realize that his flashlight was not in his hand because Trowa had it, and he was in complete darkness. "Shit," he whispered, treading in the water to keep himself upright. "Why me?!" he growled towards the far away sky, only realizing once he looked up the incredible sight above. "Woah," he whispered in awe, almost forgetting to paddle.

Far above his head in the ceiling of the cavern was an incredible vein work of faintly glowing crystal. It wasn't enough to cast any light, but with his eyes adjusted to the dark he could easily pick out the spidering path of the mineral vein high above. In various spots, larger patches of it could be seen clustered together, looking like a layer of stars on top of a network of fading lightning paths. The subdued glow gave him comfort in the otherwise pitch black, but his heart still sank at the thought of not having a flashlight. "But I do!" he suddenly exclaimed, feeling around in his pocket to pull out the forgotten mp3 player. Thankfully when he'd had the casing made it had been completely sealed, so the device within was safe from water damage. He pressed a random button and the backlight came on, illuminating a small space around the braided boy. "Thank god I couldn't go one day without my music," he whispered shakily, holding it out in front of him to illuminate the water.

It was murky, and from what he could tell by the echoes of his earlier shout, the cavern was fairly large. There were odd noises bouncing on the walls, very faint and hard to decipher, but it almost sounded like snippets of conversation. He shook his head to clear those thoughts.

"Duo?!"

"Maxwell, can you hear us?!"

_Oh thank god,_ he thought gratefully. "Hey guys!" he called back up. "I'm alright, I landed in water!"

"How far down is it?" came Wufei's echoing voice.

"Pretty far!" he shouted back, unthinking as to what their form of communication may be causing. "Either of you have rope?"

Before he could hear a response, there came a rumbling up above. Duo did not need light to realize what was happening, but he had just enough time to curse in alarm and dive under the water when he heard something drop right above him. A large stalactite plunged into the pool where he had just been, dragging Duo down from the suction of the much larger mass. He started to panic when his kicking did not yield results, fighting harder to get away from the downward suction until he finally broke free. He emerged from the water a second time, taking in great lungfuls of air. The ceiling above him was calmly silent, and he wanted to keep it that way this time around, so he did not call out for his silent friends. Instead, he held up the music player again and hit a button, casting the pale glow of the backlight on the water around him.

He nervously studied his surroundings all around, looking for indications of a shoreline of the underground lake. He was too distracted to notice the shadow that darted underneath him within the murky depths, but he most definitely felt the thing that brushed against his foot. "Holy fuck!" he hissed in alarm, looking all around for what had touched him. He began to see dark figures moving about within the water, some fast, some slow, but they were all very close below him. Duo felt a shiver travel up his spine when another something touched him, so he chose a direction and swam. The backlight of his music player went out from inactivity, and it almost sent him into a full blown panic. When he turned it on again to illuminate the path before him, it only showed Duo the dark shapes moving faster and faster around him.

A painful distraction kept him from freaking out in the form of his outstretched hand crashing into a rock, bruising his knuckles from the impact and jamming his fingers in odd directions. He bit back a hiss of pain for his throbbing hand before fumbling for the rock, realizing he'd found a shore, or at least a big rock that emerged above the waterline. He hauled himself out of the underground lake thankfully, coming to rest on the rocky ground with a wet slap and some heavy breathing. Cautiously, he shined the music player at the water behind him, watching the dark shapes as they thrived around the spot he'd been in before slowly dispersing. Duo let out a shaky breath and pushed himself upright until he was in a sitting position, staring blankly into the inky blackness.

It was completely dark and utterly silent, and he wished reverently for a source of light that didn't have to be reactivated over and over. Instead, he pushed play on the mp3 player, thankful for the soft drift of music that emerged. He got anxious in quiet places normally, so he had no doubt he'd be driven insane by this terrible darkness without a little sound to remind him he _could _still hear. Thank god for the damned gadget. Then a terrible thought struck him, and he reached behind him to pull off the backpack and look inside the wet bag.

His camera was not so fortunate to have custom Gundamium casing, so he had no doubt that it was trashed after being submerged in water for so long. When he opened the battery hatch, water trickled out and only confirmed his fear. He sighed. "So much for showing Quat the pictures..." he mumbled wearily, putting the device back in it's padded case. Next he pulled out his cell phone, which was also comatose, causing him to grumble about all the things he had to replace. Next, he checked on his food supplies. The prepared meals were fine, since he'd double-bagged them in ziplocks, and the ration bars were safe thanks to the sealed wrappers. The blanket was soaked through, along with the sweater he had tied around his waist. Duo pulled out one of his two water bottles, his movements strained and tired as he uncapped it for a sip. He sat shivering on the smooth-rock shore, picking through the lunch he'd prepared for an enjoyable day of rock climbing. What bullshit.

He sighed, realizing he was probably going to die down here. He wondered, with a pang of loneliness, how Wufei and Trowa were doing.

- - - -

"Duo!" the two exclaimed in alarm when they heard his curse, and when Trowa turned the light where he'd just been, there was nothing but a hole in the floor just barely large enough to fit a young man. He and Wufei converged around the spot, listening to their friend's rough descent that trailed away the farther he fell, until they heard what sounded like a crash. They stared at each other gravely for a long moment, neither quite willing to venture the question out loud. However, they heard sputtering and what sounded like Duo's angry voice far below. "Duo?!" Trowa called, kneeling next to the hole.

"Maxwell, can you hear us?!"

There was a moment of silence in which they did not dare breathe as they waited for a good sign.

"Hey guys!" came a shout from deep in the little tunnel. "I'm alright, I landed in water!"

"Oh my god he's alive," Wufei breathed in relief, sharing a look with Trowa that confirmed exactly what he was feeling. He turned back to the hole and shouted down to their missing friend. "How far down is it?"

"Pretty far!" came an echo of the braided boy's voice. "Either of you have rope?"

Wufei and Trowa looked at each other before starting to check their packs, but they looked up in surprise when an alarmed curse bounced up the walls of the hole before they heard the rumbling. They heard a great splash of water and the closer sound of crumbling rock. "Duo!" they called together, but got no answer. Their voices merely bounced back in a muffled way. "I think the passage is blocked," Trowa said, picking up a nearby pebble to test his theory. He threw it into the hole and it disappeared just like Duo had, but within a few seconds they heard it hit something and come to a stop.

"Damnit," Wufei cursed. "Come on, we have to find another way down there!"

Trowa threw his bag back on and they scrambled up to make their way further down the tunnel. "Watch where you step," he told the other ex-pilot gravely, scanning the floor with the flash light to be safe. They practically ran down the tunnel, and relief took them when it started to angle downwards. As long as they went down they had a hope of locating Duo and making sure he was okay. "Wait!" Trowa told Wufei, stopping suddenly when he caught sight of another tunnel branching away from theirs. It looked like it took a sharp dive down. They paused uncertainly, before Wufei got an idea. He looked around until he found a sharp piece of rock.

"Hold the light steady," he told the taller boy, kneeling down in front of the new tunnel. The Chinese boy positioned the rock as comfortably in his hand as possible and started scraping it across the floor of the cave, forming letters. He drew one arrow pointing the way they had come, writing 'start' underneath it. He then drew another arrow, pointing in the direction they had been heading, and wrote 'out?' underneath. When he stood up, he slipped the rock in his pocket.

"Good idea," Trowa told him, feeling better now that they wouldn't get mixed up on the way out again. "Let's go." He took the lead and started making his way down the steep tunnel, placing his steps carefully in an attempt not to slip and fall. The last thing either of them needed or wanted was a bruised tailbone on top of everything else going on, so they took it careful. On the way down, they passed several more tunnels elsewhere, but none of them looked to head downwards like the one they were in, so Wufei marked them with question marks as they went and pressed on. After a good ten minutes of descent, Trowa paused. "Wait," he said slowly, looking at Wufei. "I think I heard something..."

They both stood still, not daring to breathe, until the sound became cleared. "It's Maxwell," Wufei said in relief. "That's his music playing, we must be getting closer!"

The two ex-pilots trudged on, and the tunnel turned sharper and sharper downwards the farther they went, telling them they were definitely heading in the right direction. Duo's music got clearer the further down they went, and they started calling his name when the floor leveled out a bit. Eventually, their shouts hit their target.

"Wufei! Trowa!" they heard echoing down the tunnel, and they picked up the pace. Eventually they saw a faint blue glow that went off and on from time to time. They shared confused looks, but kept going, wanting more to find their friend than question what the light was. Eventually, voices became clearer to each other, and Duo came out from around the corner, looking soggy and tired.

"Are you guys a sight for sore eyes," he said in immense relief, meeting them halfway down the tunnel that spanned between them.

"Are you alright?" Trowa asked, checking him over with the light and making the American wince from the brightness. Aside from a few scrapes, he looked okay. "What happened?"

Duo regaled them of his trip down the hole, of the stalactite falling and the amazing veins of crystal far above in the large cavern with the underground lake. "And it was friggin pitch black, but I had my baby," he said with a weary grin, holding up the mp3 player and pressing pause to make the backlight turn on. "And shit, you shoulda seen these things in the water, scared the daylights outta me. These black shadows were swimming all around me and one of 'em brushed my leg," he described, shivering at the memory. "So I swam like hell and found a shore eventually. Found it with my knuckles, actually," he said with a grin, holding his hand into the light. His fingers were resting slightly crooked, two of his knuckles were split, and most of his hand was reddened. "Hurt like a bitch, I tell ya. And now _all _of me is wet and it's freezing down here!"

Just as he finished this complaint, Wufei draped a blanket around his shoulders with a teasing smirk. "How is it that you manage to attract so much trouble in one day?"

"Luck of the Irish I guess," Duo mumbled, pulling the blanket close.

"You're not Irish," Trowa stated, looking slightly confused.

"Exactly," the brunette replied with an ironic little smile. "Hence my _lack _of luck. Let's get the fuck outta here, please."

"Agreed," Wufei chipped in warily.

"I'm gonna have a word with Jeff when I get back to the shop," Duo mumbled halfheartedly as they started walking, looking down at his wet shoes. If he ever saw a cave or tunnel as long he lived he'd sure as hell make tracks in the opposite direction after this little adventure. When they started getting to the incline of the tunnel, he had a little trouble keeping up with the other two. He was still dripping water and it was making his wet shoes slip on the smooth rock beneath their feet. He managed well enough, but their real problem showed up soon enough.

The three reached a fork in the path and Trowa searched the ground for Wufei's markings from earlier. It was a fruitless effort, as he couldn't seem to find them. "Where did you make those directions?" he asked worriedly, scanning every bit of the floor.

"They're gone!" Wufei exclaimed in shock, grabbing the flashlight to look for himself. "I put them right at the mouth of each tunnel, and they're gone!"

"What?" Duo asked, out of the loop. "What's gone?"

"I made markings on the floor to show where we have and haven't been," the Chinese boy explained to the other ex-pilot. "And they're gone now, they're not here."

"You mean we're lost down here?" Duo squeaked in alarm, eyes widening at the idea.

"Technically we were already lost," Trowa pointed out unhelpfully, earning a pointed look from Duo.

"I realize that but now we're even farther below ground than before. It's gonna be a lot harder to get out at this point," the brunette said evenly, trying to stay calm.

"Well, one of us will go into each tunnel and see if it goes up or down," the taller boy reasoned with a shrug, always the one with a level head for such a situation. He and Wufei automatically split apart to check out the tunnels, until Duo reached out and grabbed each of them by their shirts with a desperate grip.

"Nuh uh! No more splitting up! We're going to get separated again!" he told them, pulling Wufei closer and then directing all three of them into the tunnel Trowa had chosen. "Neither of you are leaving my sight to go wandering off on your own. So help me I will play den mother if I have to!" he exclaimed, voice squeaking a little at the end.

"Alright, alright!" Wufei told the brunette while prying fingers from his shirt. "Calm down Maxwell, damn."

"I'll calm down when I'm dead," the American shot back, back on hair-trigger from the revelation that they were even more lost than before.

"I think we're going to right way," Trowa told the other two, ignoring their antics behind him. The floor of the tunnel they'd chosen was continuing to rise, and even though they lacked Wufei's directions, it seemed familiar to him.

"I sure hope so," Duo said warily, looking all around the tunnel as they climbed upward. He almost slipped a few times, but managed to catch himself before his nose could smash into the floor. He got to thinking about how long it would take anyone to find them, if that was even possible. It would be at least a few days, seeing as they weren't due to return from the trip until tomorrow morning. When no one checked in surely Heero and Quatre would realize something was wrong. Duo looked at his watch, still working thanks to the waterproof design, and turned on backlight to show the numbers. It was 8:47pm, which left a good deal of time until anyone realized they were missing. After that, it was a toss up in estimation of how long it would take someone to find them in these caves. He mused his thoughts out loud to the other two on the subject.

"Knowing Winner, he will send an entire search party to comb the area en masse," Wufei said, a hint of relief in his voice despite the little jibe at Quatre. "They'll be sure to find the hole where we fell through, and most likely any other entrances to this network of tunnels."

As the discussed the possibilities, they weren't paying too much attention to where they were going or the approaching obstacle. Since Trowa and Wufei were just a few inches farther ahead than Duo, it was them who ran into a lack of floor this time. Twin shouts of surprise made the brunette lunge forward when he saw the two slide down a sudden incline, managing to catch them just in time. His busted hand screamed in pain from where it was fisted into Trowa's back pack, and his arms trembled with the weight of the other two ex-pilots. "So, I'm the one always getting into trouble, huh?" he joked in a strained voice, hauling Wufei up enough with his good hand that the Chinese boy managed to climb back up. "Help me get Trowa up here," he said to Wufei, and together they pulled him back onto level ground.

They sat in shock near the drop, recovering from the scare in silence. It was Trowa who spoke first, shining the flashlight into the seemingly endless abyss they'd almost fallen into. "And here I thought we were going the right way..." He shined the light across the chasm, revealing that it was much too far to jump.

"So," Duo stated, rubbing his hand tenderly. "Backtrack, then?"

"I guess so," Wufei replied, eyes catching the action. "How the hell did you smash your hand up so bad?" he asked incredulously.

"I was trying to get away from the monster ghost fish things!" the brunette shot back in defense. "Anything that lives down here can't be friendly, and they looked pretty damn big!"

"Enough," Trowa told the two, standing up. "Let's just go. The sooner we get back to the other cave mouth, the sooner we can find our way out. That one's obviously the one we came from to find Duo."

"I could have sworn this was the way we came," Wufei mumbled suspiciously, peering into the darkness of the pit. "But obviously not. Let's go then," he agreed, standing and helping Duo up as well. The three turned around and backtracked down the tunnel, despite how wrong it felt heading away from the surface. The darkness seemed to swallow them up the further they went, creeping in on all sides as if it was just waiting for the flashlight to go out and leave them exposed. The walk down seemed to go on forever, but the fork they had paused at continued to evade them. "Doesn't it seem like we should have found the other tunnel by now?" Wufei asked curiously.

"Most definitely," Trowa replied, warily scanning the walls with the flashlight as the walked. "I think that turn right there is the last one," he told the other two as they approached a corner. The scenery was all starting to blend together, though, so it was very difficult to find familiarity in anything they passed. It was all rock wall and rock floor, nothing to easily identify an area in the winding tunnels that had been playing with their heads for hours. But this felt like the turn they were looking for, but when the rounded the corner...

"No," Duo said in bafflement. He sunk to the ground as if in defeat, too worn out mentally to go any further.

It was the same underground lake he'd fallen into.

- - - -

I can't stop writing! =DDDD This is the funner-est story I've ever written! And to you one or two people following this fic, you won't have to wait long for another update. Chapter 3 is already written!! *evil laughter*


	3. The Dead Grove

Water Voices

Chapter 3: The Dead Grove

- - - -

"_I got this feeling that they're gonna break down the door  
I got this feeling they they're gonna come back for more  
See I was thinking that I lost my mind  
But it's been getting to me all this time  
And it don't stop dragging me down"_

"_Tranquilize" – The Killers_

- - - -

"I wouldn't touch that water," Duo warned sullenly, a pout firmly affixed on his face. Trowa looked up at him from where he'd been looking into the lake with his flashlight. "It made my clothes stink, so I would not touch it." He sighed wearily, taking a cautious sniff at his tank top. "What I wouldn't give to go back and roll around in that puddle I fell in earlier. At least that water was clean," he mumbled. "Now I'll die a smelly mess."

Wufei gave the other boy's shoulder a slight shove, causing the brunette to look up at him. "Stop being such a drama queen, Maxwell. We'll get out of here eventually."

"I thought you said false hope would get us nowhere?" the brunette shot back smugly.

"Touché," Wufei acknowledged, sitting down next to the American. "I suppose now's a good time as any to take a rest."

Duo made an unintelligible sound and let himself fall down on his back, staring up at the ceiling of the cavern. He kicked off his shoes and socks, both of which were still wet. "As long as you guys are here, check out the top of cave like I told you about." At his beckon, Trowa came over and sat down with them, turning off the flashlight so they could see the natural glow of the mineral veins. After a few minutes of their eyes adjusting to the darkness, the faint patterns became clear, earning sounds of awe from Wufei and Trowa.

"Wow," the Chinese boy said in admiration. "That's quite a sight."

"Yeah," Duo said with a yawn, turning onto his side to curl up. "I'm glad you guys found me," he mumbled, pulling the still sodden blanket out of his pack to make into a pillow. "I was going nutty down here before... Without... without any..." His sentence trailed off before he could finish, a quiet snore leaving his mouth after a few moments.

Wufei studied him with a calm look. "He's out like a light," he told Trowa quietly.

"It's been a long day," the taller boy agreed, stifling his own tired yawn. "For all of us." He stood up and turned the flashlight back on, keeping it averted from the exhausted Duo. "I'm going to see if there's anything we can use to make a fire. He shouldn't be sleeping in those wet things."

"I'll help you search," Wufei replied, pulling over his pack to look for his flashlight. On an afterthought, he set the light on the ground near Duo's hand, and in his sleep the braided boy grabbed onto it. Wufei stifled a chuckle and got out the third flashlight from Trowa's pack, getting up to aid in the search for any kind of firewood. They spent about five minutes combing the large cavern fruitlessly, until they arrived at the edge of the underground lake, staring out at the water thoughtfully. "How do you think it formed down here?" Trowa wondered aloud to Wufei.

"I'm not sure. Though I would like to see these shadows Maxwell was talking about, let's see if they're out and about," Wufei mused curiously, focusing the beam of light on the water's surface. Like cockroaches scattering with the flick of the light switch, they saw a great swarm of dark shapes disappear in a flash, leaving the water's surface without so much as a ripple. They stared at the eerie scene for a while, occasionally seeing the shadows flirt with the edge of the light as if curious, yet too cautious to actually venture within the illuminated circle. "We should get back," Wufei finally said, averting his light from the murky depths. "If he wakes up and we're not there he'll flip out."

Trowa nodded in agreement and they headed back to the spot they'd left the braided boy. They found Duo still curled on his side, the flashlight gripped tightly in his good hand as he slept. The two settled near him feeling exposed in the middle of the cavern floor, but they didn't want to wake Duo or try to move him, so they stayed. One by one the lights went out and they drifted off to sleep, cradled by the eerie silence and suffocating darkness.

- - - -

Duo jumped in alarm when he heard something out on the water, pushing himself upright to stare unseeingly into the darkness. Once he realized there was something in his hand, it was a relief to figure out it was a flashlight. He pressed the switch and shined the light out at the water. It was still and placid, but he could have sworn it was a splash that woke him. Maybe it was one of those fish things he'd seen down there, breaking the surface for some air perhaps. He sighed wearily, not at all feeling rested, so he pointed the light at his watch to see what time it was. The digital face read 1:43 a.m. Curiously, Duo pointed his light about to check on his friends, but found only the pile of their packs where they had been thrown earlier. Duo's stomach knotted and coiled as he continued search, but did not spot them. "Hey guys!" he called anxiously. "Where are you?"

His voice echoed all by its lonesome against the walls of the cavern, fading into a ghostly whisper before leaving all silent once more. Now Duo was starting to get alarmed. Where the hell did they go, and why didn't they tell him? That is to say, if they had gone willingly? But who else would be down here in this funhouse of tunnels that would kidnap just those two and not him as well? The brunette whined in alarm and stood up, pointing the light around. "Trowa! Wufei!" he called louder, receiving no answer just as his last attempt. "Shit!" he cursed. He didn't know why, but he wanted to check the water, so he headed over to the underground lake and shined the flashlight on the surface.

The water was still and murky as usual, and he could see nothing of importance. He'd warned them to avoid the water, so surely he wouldn't find anything out here. Maybe they'd headed back up the tunnel to check for a way out and didn't want to disturb him? But he'd specifically _told _them not to wander off alone, or leave _him _alone for that matter. He'd had enough of being isolated by himself in the darkness, he didn't need them futzing around elsewhere without telling him they'd left. Damnit.

Just as Duo was about to turn away from the lake, something tickled his hearing faintly. It sounded like whispering, and it was echoing almost inaudibly throughout the spacious cavern, bouncing from wall to wall and ending up distorted. The sound gave him the creeps, and he shivered when it slowly faded away into silence once more. This whole place was one big freak show.

"_Duo."_

The brunette looked up when he heard his name, searching the area for his friends. "Wu? Trowa?" he called out, certain that it had come from the nearby area. It sounded near, despite the quietness of it.

"_Duo Maxwell."_

He frowned. "Hello? Where are you?"

"_Maxwell's Demon,_" the voice breathed in a ragged hiss, sending a cold chill up his spine. Duo shined the light in the direction the voice had come from, but that was out in the middle of the lake...

"_Duo..._"

The braided boy was starting to breathe faster and faster, and when he pointed the light a little farther out, it illuminated a shape. It wasn't either of his friends, and it wasn't an animal. In fact it looked to be shaped like a human, but it was... standing on the surface of the water. It was an inky black in color despite the bright glow of the flashlight, looking like a dark specter from one's deepest nightmare. Duo stood stock still at the edge of the lake, staring at the still figure out on the water. When its head picked up to focus in his direction, he jerked subtly away, ready to run. The flashlight in his hands was trembling, making the light waver on the figure, but it did not disguise the step forward it took.

Duo scrambled back in fear, only to find his feet had no purchase as he fell backwards into thick, murky water that choked him on his startled intake of breath.

"_Maxwell_!"

Duo shot upright with a strangled yell, his chest heaving with quick, deep breaths that didn't seem to bring him enough oxygen. His entire body was chilled by a cold sweat, and his hand ached from the tight grip he had on Wufei's collar... Wait, Wufei? He looked up, realizing it was indeed his Chinese friend crouched next to him, illuminated by the beam of light from the torch Trowa was holding. They were staring at him in concern, and it took Duo a few moments of confusion to realize they'd never been gone, but it was just a dream. A _freaky _dream...

"Are you alright?" Wufei asked cautiously, letting the distressed American hang onto his shirt until he felt the need to let go.

"Yeah," Duo breathed, shakily pressing the back of his free hand against his forehead. "Just a nightmare," he told them. He sorely released his hold on Wufei's shirt, flexing the tired fingers out of their death grip. He sighed, wiping damp strands of bangs out of his face. "This place really has me on edge, is all. Sorry for waking you guys."

"Don't worry about it," Wufei told him, giving him a pat on the shoulder in a rare show of comfort. "It's about time to get up anyway."

Duo caught himself before he could say 'it can't be!' because of the pitch black. He had to remind himself that it was always dark down here, so he checked his watch, which read 7:24 a.m. Before he could help it, a whine of distress left his throat. "It should be light out..." he whispered longingly. "God I want out of here. Let's have something to eat and try again."

So the boys ate their remaining sandwiches, their low spirits preventing them from sharing too much conversation while they ate. It was too depressing, being in the dark caves and tunnels for so long. They were all on hair-trigger as well, which didn't help their sense of peace. When the three were done eating, they packed up their stuff and headed for the tunnel that led out of the cavern, but not before Duo took one last look at the underground lake. Good riddance.

He, Trowa and Wufei trudged up the tunnel that led out, which coincidentally had not moved while their backs were turned, contrary to their luck as of late. Duo was feeling quite iffy as of late in regards to the structure of these caves, distrustful of something he could not place. It wasn't the structural integrity that worried him so much, but just the place itself. He swore things kept changing on them. The Gundam pilots were some damned thorough guys, and Duo didn't think it was possible that all this shit was happening because they were taking wrong turns and overlooking places they had already been. It just didn't settle right with him, making him jumpy and suspicious. _Damn paranoia, _he thought sullenly. But he did not try to dispel those thoughts, because paranoia had saved his life more than once in the past.

These rambling thoughts filled his mind until the silence became stuffy. "Music?" he asked the other two, earning sounds of assent from them. Duo took the music player out of his pocket and turned it on, pleasantly filling the silence with something other than their echoing footsteps. The mood gradually lightened a considerable amount through this tactic until they could strike up conversation. It seemed a little easier after some sleep and some food to not fall into pessimistic silence this time. Duo's hand hurt less today and he wasn't sopping wet anymore, so that was helping as well. So they hiked higher up the tunnel, coming across the occasional side passage that they bypassed to keep heading towards the surface. Wufei's markings that he'd made on the floor the previous day were nowhere to be found, conspicuously absent.

Likewise, they eventually came across the fork in the tunnel that they had not been able to relocate the night before. This was disturbing, since it was a wide passage in either direction and most definitely hard to miss. They stood before the branch in the road skeptically. "We took that one last night," Duo said quietly, pointing to the one on the left. "So I guess we take the other if we don't want to fall into a pit."

Trowa stared somewhat distrustfully at both passages. "Yes," he agreed, heading towards the tunnel on the right. "This one will have to lead us back out to the main cavern we started out in."

Duo personally felt like the whole damn place was moving things around to screw with them, but he didn't mention this to his friends, who surely would dismiss him as going stir crazy in the dark tunnels. He hoped that was really what was going on, because he couldn't take another set back down in this place. It would be just too much. He just wanted to get out into the sunlight, breathe the fresh air, and feel the wind on his skin once more. He missed those things dearly.

"Hey, look at that," Trowa said suddenly, pointing to something on the ground some feet ahead of them. They came closer to the arrow etched into the floor, pointing in the direction they were going. "Well, we finally found one of your directions," he told Wufei, who looked confused.

"Thankfully," the Chinese boy said. "But what happened to all the other ones I made up until now? I know I marked every single new entrance that we passed on the way down to the lake." He didn't mention it to the others, but he did not remember drawing anything just out in the middle of the floor. As far as he could tell he had only marked in front of branching tunnels. But how else would the arrow have gotten there? He repeated this over and over, and his doubt started to quell. So he remained quiet as they continued up the path, keeping an eye on his friends while letting Duo's music relax him somewhat. The American's insatiable urge to make the important things bullet-proof had come in handy. Though that wouldn't help them fifteen minutes into the walk, when an ominous crack beneath their feet made the three pause in alarm.

The ground beneath their shoes shifted a fraction, like slowly splintering ice. For a few moments they just stood still, no one daring to breathe. "Go one at a time," Trowa said calmly, looking at the others. "Who wants to go first?" he asked.

Wufei gripped his flashlight tightly. "I'll go," he said. He carefully began moving forward, easing towards the edge of the tunnel where it might be more structurally sound with support from the wall. For a few moments no one spoke, but when the floor in front of him crumbled away, he instinctively stumbled back in surprise to avoid the pitfall. In one heart-stopping moment, the abrupt shift in weight caused the unsteady ground to give in and collapse, taking all three boys with it into the dark below.

The descent down the sharp incline was rough as they tumbled head over heels down a rocky slope littered with stray bits of jagged debris. Hands reached out for a way to stop the fall but there was nothing to hold onto. At the end of the painful slide, the three ex-pilots fell into a sore heap on top of the loose rocks, a cloud of dust settling around them. It took a few moments for anyone to move, but they started to disentangle their limbs from each other after some tense seconds. "This trip just keeps getting funner and funner," Duo groaned tiredly, picking up his nearby flashlight to examine his scraped and bloody shins.

"That's not a real word," Wufei corrected half-heartedly, pushing himself up. His elbows had gotten the brunt of the fall, and stung bitterly from the bits of dirt and rock embedded in his raw skin. "Everyone okay?" he asked.

"Well enough after our third tumble," Trowa replied quietly. "I think we all need patching up, though," he added, taking in the various scrapes and cuts they'd all acquired on the way down. He gingerly took off his back pack, trying not to aggravate his sore shoulder as he did so. He easily found the well stocked first aid kit and they set to work. It took about ten minutes to clean up all the skinned limbs, taking into account Duo helping Wufei with his elbows and Trowa helping the American to re-dress the large cut on his forehead. After everything was cleaned, disinfected and bandaged, the group took a moment to assess the fall they'd taken. It seemed clear that they would not be climbing back up the way they came, judging by the steep incline and unstable footing, so they stood up gingerly to head out another way. When the three ex-pilots shined their flashlights into the newest cavern, an amazed feeling overtook them.

"_Woah,_" Duo said with wide eyes.

Before them spanned a sea of lifeless trees long expired in their underground, unlit tomb. Possibly green and lively at one point, they were now twisted visages of what once was. Brittle and darkened with age, bare and snarled branches snaked towards the sky as if searching for the long lost sunlight. It was a dead forest. A graveyard of still standing death, buried in their own mass grave underground.

"How the hell would trees grow down here in the first place?" Wufei asked in a baffled voice, staring out at the sea of preserved trees.

"Got me," Duo replied, equally confused. He started towards the dead forest, shining his light at the first one he came upon to inspect it. "They seem pretty damn old," he told the other two as they came up behind him. He felt the trunk with his free hand, pressing slightly with the tips of his fingers and rewarded with the crackle of old, brittle bark. They seemed quite old indeed, enough so that Duo definitely would not trust climbing in one. "They sure defied the odds, though," he mused with some admiration. They had to have had some will to live to adapt down here. The question remained, if they had lived long enough to grow to such height, what had killed them if not the lack of sun?

"This place just keeps getting weirder and weirder," Wufei sighed, nudging the braided boy to get him moving again. The three continued through the dead forest, scanning in all directions with their torches in an attempt to locate any exits from the cavern. It had just seemed like they were nearing their original starting point again, and now here they were at least twenty feet down from where they'd just been. It was starting to wear on the boys, mentally and physically. It was all they could do to hope they found a way out before their supplies diminished.

"Hey," Duo said slowly, pausing in front of a tree when they had gotten about a quarter of the way through the grove. He shined the light halfway up the trunk, illuminating a drawing carved into the bark. It pictured a man standing on water, with what looked like shadowy figures hovering around him. All at once Duo's previously forgotten dream came back to him, and a tremendous shiver ran up his spine and gave him chills. "Just a dream," he muttered to himself quietly, jogging a little to catch up with Wufei and Trowa. He did not need to get separated from them again and stall their escape of this underground prison. But as he left the tree with the eerie drawing, something latched onto his ankle and pulled him into the air with a jerk. Duo let out a strangled shout of alarm as he went upside down, dropping the flashlight to the ground with a loud 'clank.'

Between the pulses in his ears, the American heard his friends come running over. Before he'd even been struggling in the air for two seconds something above him gave a loud, dry 'snap' and he fell to the ground-

-head first.

Duo lay on the ground in a fading stupor, just long enough to see something bobbing high above him near the ceiling of the cavern. The approaching swathe of light dimmed and was swept away as darkness took him, muffling the concerned voices into a comforting lull of white noise in the back of his head.

- - - -

Ooohh nooo head injury?!


	4. Don't Look Back

Water Voices

Chapter 4: Don't Look Back

* * *

"_Follow me to that place where  
When you're lost you finally see  
Keep in mind as you remember  
All the answers you walked right through  
Quietly..."_

"_City of Sleep" – Great Northern_

_

* * *

_

His breathing was slow and it rattled as it passed his dry throat, sounding similar to a death wheeze for how sickly it sounded. His mouth tasted gritty and dry, like he'd been asleep for eons in the desert. The rough air caught on his irritated throat and he started coughing hoarsely, rolling over onto his side to ease the sudden onset of spasms in his lungs. The coughs started to smooth out after a minute or so and the air come a little more freely to his abused esophagus, granting him the ability to open his eyes.

He was in a dark place, just as dark as the caverns he'd been wallowing around in for god knows how long. Spots danced before his eyes as he stared at the pitch black ceiling above him, and he squinted while craning his head to the side to look around him. Where were his friends...? There was a broken branch next to him and a loose rope around his ankle, but no sign of Trowa or Wufei. Duo pushed himself up on shaky arms, clearing his throat until his voice returned at an audible level. "Wufei? Trowa?" he called roughly, his echoing voice fading into nothing as muffled silence was his response. "What the fuck!" he growled angrily. "I can't believe they left!"

Frustrated and with a sense of growing dread, Duo stumbled to his feet, kicking the brittle old noose of rope off of his ankle before noticing his backpack where it had fallen. He picked up the pack and the nearby flashlight that he had dropped, shaking it a little before the light flickered on. The visibility comforted him a little, but he saw no sign of his friends as he pointed the light around the cavern. The knot in his stomach twisted tightly as his every shift and movement echoed eerily. "When I find those two I'm gonna beat their asses," he whispered, picking a direction and walking.

After wandering through the grove of dead trees, he found a little tunnel that led out of the cavern, the only possibly exit that the guys could have used. He walked for what felt like an hour before the path led to a small opening, one that he could barely squeeze through. Even then, the jagged mouth of the niche clawed at his clothes and skin as he shimmied through. When Duo emerged into the new cavern, he pointed the flashlight in front of him.

"Mother _fucker_!" he swore in heart-broken frustration, resisting the urge to just chuck the damn flashlight into the water.

He was back at the underground lake.

Instead of the throwing the flashlight like he wanted, he settled for lashing out with his foot and kicking a stray rock. The heavy hiking boots he was wearing prevented his toe from smarting too much, but the rock was not so fortunate. It tumbled and rolled across the stone floor before falling with a loud plunk into the lake.

A muffled, heavy silence followed this, only disturbed by Duo's breathing as the tense atmosphere slowly dawned upon him. His blue eyes flickered around the shadowed cavern warily, his anger slowly dissipating into something like paranoia. Something felt wrong in this place, something malignant and dark. It made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as he slowly looked around the cavern. Slowly, over the course of what seemed like forever, a very faint sound tickled the edge of his hearing. It slowly gained volume, little as it was, and it caught Duo's attention. It was faint and hard to discern, bouncing against the cave walls and the surface of the water to jumble into a unidentifiable sound. Then, he realized what it was.

It was the sound of whispering.

Duo felt his heart start to beat faster and faster, his stomach twisting up again as he stood deathly still. The whispering was just the slightest hiss of words from somewhere in the cavern, like someone was watching him and discussing his plight with humor. A near silent murmur of laughter right behind him caused the brunette to spin around, dropping the flashlight with a loud clatter when he came face to face with a dark silhouette. The floundering beam of light illuminated the thing in front of him for less than a second, but that was all it took to reveal a body made of pure blackness and a face without eyes, punctuated by a grin of needle like teeth and one red eye at the back of the throat, peering at him with a slit pupil.

When Duo got the air back into his lungs, he screamed.

* * *

Blue eyes opened wide as Duo awoke with a sharp jerk that pained his sore body while a ragged gasp caught in his throat. He sat up abruptly when he felt something nip his ankle in a fiery stab, but his too-fast heartbeat and throbbing head made the world swirl in a sick dance around him. He hadn't even realized he'd begun to tilt sideways until someone caught him by the shoulders, preventing the inevitable meeting between his face and the rough ground. The hands gently lowered him back to the ground, where his head came into contact with something soft and soothing.

"Easy there Maxwell, you took a pretty good fall on your head, no need to do it again."

The brunette didn't respond except for a pained groan, his whole body shaking tremulously as he willed his heart to slow down so he could breathe properly. It felt like it was going to burst out of his chest for how hard it was beating. But all he could do was force his vision to clear so he could see more than shifting patterns of light and dark spots. His ankle stung again and he unconsciously jerked in response to the unwelcome sensation, mumbling incoherently.

"Your ankle?" he heard Trowa's voice, and he turned to look at the other boy as his vision cleared into something normal. Trowa just looked relieved that he'd been able to focus on his face. "That trap had pretty old rope, and it dug a bit into your skin."

"Trap?" he wondered aloud, blinking as the cotton and fuzz started to clear from his aching head.

"It was a noose trap on the ground," Wufei clarified. "It caught your ankle and pulled you up, but the branch it was strung over broke a few seconds later... Maxwell, you're shaking like a leaf!" the Chinese boy exclaimed, placing a hand on the brunette's shoulder to feel the tremors through his palm.

"Nightmare," Duo whispered in a ragged voice, earning concerned glances from his companions at the mention of another one. The braided boy tried again to sit up, managing to get upright with Wufei's help and some slow careful progress. His head started spinning anyway, but it wasn't as bad as before. Duo reached up to feel the back and top of his head, finding a large sore spot right on the crown that stung when he touched it. "My head hurts like a bitch."

Concerned by the possibility of damage or a concussion, Wufei moved in front of Duo and held up his hand with the pointer and ring finger extended. "Maxwell, how many fingers am I holding up?"

Duo squinted again, blinking as if trying to clear something from his eyes. Things were still spinning a little, so he had to command the multiple images of Wufei's hand into one picture. It worked... A little. "Uh, anywhere from one to five," he said, trying to instill some humor in the situation. Before Wufei could get all wound up, he spoke again, rubbing his head. "Seriously, two," he amended, seeing the Chinese boy relax slightly. No need to poke an already tense dragon more than once.

"Are you guessing?" Wufei asked suspiciously.

"No," the brunette replied with a weak grin. "Let's see if I'm right," he added, reaching out and grabbing the other boy's fingers in one hand. "Yup, two. Did I pass?" he asked cheekily, moving to stand up. The movement caused his head to spin, and he sat back down before he'd even gotten one foot on the ground. The little spots had returned to his vision with a vengeance, bobbing and weaving in all their nauseating glory. "Urgh," he groaned again. "I think this place has it out for me."

"Could be, you have been getting into an awful lot of trouble since we got here," Trowa remarked neutrally.

"Really, I've never seen you so danger prone before," Wufei added in, a teasing smirk on his face.

Duo stuck his tongue out in a childish fashion, relieved for the tease none-the-less. It took his mind away from that gruesome face and those needle teeth... "C'mon, let's get the hell outta here," he told the other two, making to maneuver up onto his feet.

"Are you sure you should be getting up so soon?" Trowa asked cautiously, helping the brunette to get his footing while the brief dizzy spell wore off.

"No," Duo said, with exertion clear in his voice. He stood up fully and picked up his back pack, similar to how he'd done in the nightmare. He furrowed his eyebrows, trying not to think about it. "But I want out of this place, and I'll be damned if I hold us up anymore than I can help," he said with determination, fixing the other two with a resolute look.

Wufei and Trowa shared a concerned glance between them, but they knew better than to attempt to change Duo's mind, and they wanted to get out of the caves just as badly as he did. They knew about sacrifice, give and take. There was always a risk, always the pressure to move even if someone was hurt. "Alright," Trowa finally said. "But you tell us if you need to rest. You hit the ground hard."

"Right-o, captain!" the brunette told Trowa with a grin, showing them that he was well enough to get going. Everyone who knew the braided boy understood that it wasn't until he stopped cracking jokes that it was time to worry. "I'll be fine, if Duo Maxwell couldn't take a few knocks to the head, I'd have been dead long ago," he assured the two.

"Too true," Wufei remarked casually, ignoring Duo's indignant 'hey!' in favor of nudging him into motion. "You said it, not me," he defended with a smirk.

"Hey you two," Trowa said from ahead of the bickering couple, pointing his flashlight at something. "Come look at this."

Wufei and Duo joined the taller boy where he was observing something amidst a group of large rocks. Trowa was peering closely at a particularly sizeable one, nearly five feet tall. The light from their flashlights illuminated another drawing, but this one looked more like...

"A map!" Duo exclaimed excitedly. "Yeah, see?" he asked, pointing to a small bunch of trees carved onto the face of the rock. "Here's where we are, the dead forest. And up here," he said, trailing the finger up a little higher across the dusty surface until it landed on a drawing portraying water. "Here's the lake I fell into. This is a map of the caverns!" he said in a hopeful tone.

"Did people actually live down here?" Wufei wondered aloud, his voice sounding skeptical and a little disturbed at the notion.

"They must have," Trowa replied, looking at the other two. "Someone doesn't just come miles under the surface to draw things on the wall, let alone a _map _of such a big place," he mused. "A research or exploring team wouldn't have carved it on a rock. They would have made it on paper as they went." He traced one finger along a carved line, a path from their current location that led northward on the map, past the lake in the cavern and several more large rooms. "This just may be our ticket out," he told the other two quietly. "Do you have anything to write on?" he asked, but they shook their heads. "We'll just have to commit it to memory, then."

"It's too bad I fell in that lake," Duo suddenly remarked in a thoughtful tone. "I _do _have my camera with me, but it's fried."

"Well unless you brought your printer with you today, I doubt it would have helped very much," Wufei replied, studying the map with an intense look on his face.

"Right," the brunette replied, rolling his eyes. "I usually bring my printer with me on rock climbing trips. I'll remember that next time," he groused, arms crossed over his chest. He'd given up memorizing the map after the first five seconds, since concentrating on the rock drawing made his head hurt far too much for him to be of any use. He just left the cognitive shit to his friends, who were most definitely not concussed. His head was pounding in a way that made him think he might have lost a few skills in the fall.

"I think we've got it," Trowa said, joining the brunette as Wufei followed him over. He noticed the pinched look to Duo's face. "Are you alright?" he asked cautiously.

"Yeah," Duo replied softly, closing his eyes for a moment and feeling them ache behind tired lids. "I'm fine. Let's go," he suggested.

The other two didn't push the matter, but began walking with the brunette towards the other end of the cavern. They arrived in front of a small tunnel like the map had illustrated, and Duo felt his stomach clench uncomfortably as they stepped through the passage. It was eerily similar to the one in his dream, and honest to god, if it led to a little niche that he could barely squeeze through with damn lake on the other side, he would fucking scream.

But they kept walking, for what felt like a longer time than in his dream, and it started to angle uphill, which sent a surge of relief flooding through all three of the ex-pilots. It wasn't until they were starting to get tired because of the suddenly steep climb that Duo jumped about a foot in the air with a hiss of surprise. "Holy fuck!" he yelped, startling the other two.

"What happened?" Trowa asked tensely, almost ad if he were expecting something to jump out at them.

"Sorry," Duo breathed, his heart still pounded and he reached into his pocket. "My phone just buzzed, scared the shit outta me," he stated quizzically, staring at the device.

"You mean it survived your fall into the water?" Wufei asked in confusion.

"Apparently," Duo replied. "Last I checked it wouldn't even turn on, but I guess it dried out." He hummed in thought and flipped the phone open, watching as the screen weakly flickered to life. The display was garbled and had lines of black going across it, but the phone was alive and lit up all the same. The only problem was, he couldn't see why it had buzzed. It only did that if he had a voicemail or a text, but he couldn't tell which.

"Try your voicemail," Trowa suggested. "If it just now alerted you, something must have gotten through."

"Probably no reception, but I guess it's worth a shot," Duo shrugged, pressing the first speed dial and holding the cell phone to his ear. He listened to the slightly static silence for about a minute as it tried to connect. Giving up, the brunette was just about to hang up the phone when a slightly garbled voice made its way through.

_You have 3 new messages._

"I got through!" Duo exclaimed in shock, earning hopeful looks from his friends. "Check to see if you guys have a signal!" he said, falling silent once the first message began to play. He blocked out the discussion between Wufei and Trowa as they took out their phones and began moving around to find reception.

"_Duo, I know you three were supposed to arrive back today and check in, and I haven't heard from you. It went straight to voicemail, so I guess your phone is off. Give me a call when you get this, bye!"_

"Quatre," the brunette said quietly, feeling hope stir in him as the next message played, sounding decidedly more worried.

"_Please tell me you guys decided to stay longer. I still haven't heard from you and it's now... a day since you said you'd be back. I'm getting worried, please call me."_

"I tried," Duo told the recording petulantly, hoping the third time would be the charm with the next new message. "C'mon buddy, go mother hen..."

"_Alright, I still can't get through and I _know _someone would have checked in by now. I can only assume something happened, and I've alerted police and the Preventers that you've gone missing. Wherever you guys are, we'll find you, I promise. Just hang in there."_

"God bless your heart, Quatre," the brunette murmured, closing his eyes in relief. The voicemail call ended, and it drew the attention of the other two ex-pilots when he shut the phone.

"Anything?" Wufei asked, looking worried by Duo's expression.

"Our little blondie is looking for us," the brunette said with a grin, opening his eyes to see the twin expressions of relief displayed by his friends. "He said he called the police and Preventers, so Une's crew will be hauling ass looking for three of her best agents, gentlemen."

"Maybe it's a good thing that Yuy and Winner couldn't come on the trip," Wufei stated with a weary smirk, rubbing his neck as some of the tension left him. "If we were all trapped down here we wouldn't have anyone competent enough to find us."

"I hear you on that," Duo replied with a snicker. "No offense to Une, but you can't count on an ex-Ozzie to do an ex-Gundam pilot's job, right?"

"Right," Wufei and Trowa replied almost simultaneously, smirking at each other. It really was true. No matter how much wit and resources Lady Une had at her disposal, there would never truly be a ring of confidence any more in tune with each other than the Gundam pilots. That's why Quatre's immediate intuition caused him to call when no one checked in as scheduled, but he'd still kept his head.

"So did either of you find a signal?" Duo asked, still holding onto his own phone.

But they shook their heads. "No," Wufei said mournfully. "We walked all over the immediate area and couldn't get anything."

"Well I got my voicemail, maybe I can get the outside," the braided boy said hopefully, opening his phone back up and pressing the second speed dial that was programmed with Quatre's number. He waited for another long pause while the phone tried to connect through the rock and stone, but the call disconnected after a solid minute of trying to find a signal. "Damn," the brunette cursed, trying once more under the anxious gaze of his friends, silently urging the call to go through. But it was in vain, and he got the angry beeping of a failed connection once more. "Well so much for that," the brunette murmured in frustration, shoving the phone back into his pocket.

"Let's keep walking," Trowa said, trying to hide his disappointment. "Maybe if we get higher and the layers of stone thin out, we might be able to get a call through."

Duo sighed grumpily, nodding. "Yeah, more walking through dark spooky tunnels, I gotcha," he said, following the other two as they continued going up the tunnel. At least no one could say they were going the wrong way. When one is underground, up is definitely a good direction to go. So they kept walking, further and further up for what seemed like hours. It was hard to keep track of time in the dark, endless corridor of rock and stone, even for Wufei, who had an internal clock that would put the best time-keepers to shame.

"Wait!" Duo suddenly whispered, halting the other two ex-pilots and causing them to look back at him in surprise and caution. "Did you hear that?" he asked tensely, not daring to breathe anymore than necessary. Wufei and Trowa tensed up at the query, and they too became still in an effort to hear the sound.

The brunette swallowed thickly when a faint noise bounced up towards them from lower down in the tunnel, and all three of the boys turned to look towards the source. The bowels of the tunnel became silent once more as the sound faded in a dying flutter of sound, and the beam of light that cut through the darkness from the flashlight revealed nothing. The air was tense and quiet, no one moving a muscle for fear of overshadowing the noise if it happened again. Duo stared into the darkness with an expression of sickness, suddenly reminded of his eerie nightmare about whispers and echoes in the unfathomable darkness.

For a moment, the boys were about to chalk it up to some crumbling rock, or some other natural disturbance and just keep going, but the sound came again, faint like a soft breeze, just barely audible. Being the closest to the downward slope of the tunnel, Duo felt himself backing up a little shakily, almost bumping into Wufei. But the Chinese boy couldn't be bothered to scold him, because they were all staring quietly into the darkness as the sound slowly increased in volume. Even so, it was still hard to hear, but it was gradually becoming clearer. Clear enough so that it started to sound familiar, at least to Duo, who's eyes widened as he stumbled further back and fisted one hand around his braid. "Guys, let's go," he said quietly.

"Do you know what it is?" Trowa asked in the same near whisper, unwilling to raise his voice.

"No, but I don't want to find out," the brunette said shakily.

"Wait," Wufei said, catching the attention of Duo and Trowa as they paused. "It sounds like... like voices," he said quizzically, eyebrows furrowing in a disturbed manner.

"Oh god, let's just go, please," Duo whispered frantically, feeling his heartbeat start to pick up. This couldn't be happening, not while he was awake.

"What could it be? There couldn't possibly be people down here," Trowa wondered in a soft voice, staring hard into the darkness.

"People, ghosts, ancient creepy crawlies, voodoo bullshit, I don't care what it is, let's just _go_," Duo hissed impatiently, tugging the other two into motion as the whispering got louder, bouncing off the walls in an eerie plethora of jumbled speech. Trowa and Wufei finally obliged and followed him away from the sounds, heading up through the tunnel and hopefully closer to the surface.

"Maxwell, what's got you so shaken over those noises?" Wufei asked in confusion, following the faintly trembling brunette as he hurried up ahead. "I know that was bizarre, but you're acting odd," he pointed out.

"Cause I heard that same whispering in my dream," the braided boy hissed in alarm. "It was the same! Echoing and bouncing off the walls like someone was watching me!" he whispered, a shiver running up his spine at the memory. "I just want out of these fuckin' caves! I feel like I'm going batshit down here," he said with another shudder, trying to get his hands to stop shaking.

"Do you always have nightmares this frequently?" Trowa asked, sounding concerned for the braided boy. It was obvious this place was affecting him worse than the other two.

"No, man," Duo replied, shaking his head. "Only since we got down here. I've never had weird dreams like these, either. It's something about this place. Something wrong, I'm telling you," he insisted, glancing back over his shoulder as if to make sure nothing was following them in the dark of the winding tunnel.

"I can't argue with that," Trowa retorted in a soft voice, looking rather disturbed by the recent chain of events as well. He'd begun to take stock of the oddities of these caverns as well, all the weird little things had been happening, like they were in a funhouse of mirrors and someone was laughing at them. As soldiers in a war, they'd all seen some pretty bad things, but Trowa was beginning to feel like something bad was going to happen if they didn't get out of here soon. And he wasn't thinking physical injury, he was thinking mental. Duo was already shaken by the whole thing, and if they spent too much time down here in the endless void of pitch black tunnels, he feared they would all start to lose it. Darkness could drive even the most hardened souls to madness.

"_Ssssss."_

"What was that?" Wufei asked in a tense whisper as all three froze mid-step, turning to look back into the darkness like a gunshot had gone off. The sound had been dim, like the hiss of wind from far away. It hadn't necessarily been discernable as human or animal, but it put them on alert. Trowa felt edgy in a way he hadn't since the wars, reminiscent of waiting for the enemy to discover you when you had no where to run. Wufei was stock still as he strained to listen, and Duo was starting to shake again, the injury and endless darkness starting to wear down his reserves of mental strength. Without need of verbal communication, the three former Gundam pilots began to back up carefully, continuing to face the direction of the noise while putting distance between them and it.

The nerve-wracking silence continued in such a fashion as they edged up further, until something scrabbled against rock and stone far below and the whispering returned full force, louder than ever as the sound carried up from the bowels of the tunnel.

"Holy_ shit," _Wufei whispered in alarm, as all three of them drew closer in response to the sudden burst of noise. The scrambling began to grow a little louder, an unidentifiable noise of _something _coming towards them. "Let's go," he said tersely, joining Trowa in nudging their braided friend into action, where he'd appeared to have been stunned. Duo woke up and got moving upon the harried touches, and they began to run up the tunnel in effort to get away from whatever the hell was coming from the darkness. The sounds, while faint, followed them eerily like a predator stalking its prey, chasing the boys further up. The echoing noises dogged their heels as they struggled up the increasingly steep path and fought not to slip on the loose dirt and pebbles under their feet. Duo's head was spinning from the fall he'd taken combined with the exertion, and the other two weren't much better off.

When Trowa led them around one last corner, he stopped dead in his tracks, mouth dropping open upon seeing a dead end. Duo and Wufei just barely avoided running into him as they stumbled to a halt as well, looking around their taller companion to see what he was seeing. "Are you fucking kidding me!" Duo cried in frustration and fear, turning his flashlight up the solid rock wall. As his light traveled upwards, a ledge became visible, but it was at least five feet taller than they were, and the sounds were getting closer. The boys spun around the back up against the rock wall, alarm peaking when the scrabbling noises came from just around the bend they had just turned. Whatever it was had caught up, and it had them cornered, just about to emerge from around the bend. The scrabbling turned the corner, and...

...nothing...

The sound had stopped right in front of the frozen boys in the pool of illumination from their flashlights, but there was nothing there. A cold chill passed over the three ex-pilots like an autumn wind, and then there was silence. The noise faded away like a twist of smoke on the breeze, leaving the immediate area in a stagnant hush once more. The only thing Duo, Trowa and Wufei could do was stare open-mouthed into the darkness beyond the flashlight, trying to comprehend what the fuck just happened.

After several long minutes of tense silence, where no one had been quite willing to speak, Duo was the first to break the quiet.

"I'm just gonna go ahead and sit down before I pass out," he said shakily, letting himself slide down against the rock wall to land heavily on his butt in the dirt. Neither Trowa nor Wufei said anything in response to this, but two more thumps echoed in the quiet of the tunnel as they mirrored Duo's action, because their legs were shaking just a little too much to stay upright.

* * *

Okay, sorry for the wait everyone, I hope I haven't lost your interest. Hopefully this story is off of hiatus for good, since I finished Red Means Stop I seem to have acquired some inspiration for the rest of my stories.

Oh, and just to clarify on the pilots: Everyone but Quatre is in the Preventers, and blondie is busy with his family's business. Wufei is full time and the other three are part-time, kind of like on call for missions. Heero spends the rest of his time as Relena's bodyguard and head of security, Trowa travels with the circus in their performing season, and Duo works at an auto-garage. Just wanted to let you know where they stand since it was established earlier that Duo is a mechanic, but it wasn't clarified that he'd also part time for the Preventers.

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed, and sorry again for keeping you waiting.

**Electric Smile – **Thanks, I try not to make stuff too fancy and overly wordy. That always turns me off, so I avoid it myself.

**Snowdragonct – **You don't have to worry about cannibalism in _this _story. I'm too squeamish to write such a thing!

**Tenchi Heiyanna – **I knooww, I pick on Duo a lot! But it's just cause I love him, I swear! He'll be getting a break from now on in terms of falling into holes and whatnot. xD

**Foxxy McGee – **Yes ma'am! *salutes*

**Chibi Heishi – **I'm glad I'm pulling off the creepy! ^^


	5. Where Darkness Waits

Water Voices

Chapter 5: Where Darkness Waits

* * *

"_Sleeping is giving in, _

_No matter what the time is._

_Sleeping is giving in,_

_So lift those heavy eyelids."_

"_Rebellion (Lies)" – The Arcade Fire_

_

* * *

_

Duo rubbed his face wearily, breaking the silence that had fallen over the group for the last five minutes. Until then, hearts were beating too fast for anyone to speak rationally. "Okay, are we going to discuss what just happened?" he asked hesitantly.

He felt a collective shiver from his friends where he was pressed against Trowa's shoulder. "No," they both said in unison, but Duo couldn't dispute that, since he didn't want to venture into the topic either. His heart was still pounding too hard for him to risk the topic, anyway. "Let's just keep moving," Trowa insisted quietly.

The other two agreed and the boys began to pick themselves up from the cold stone floor, standing on shaky legs that were starting to gain their stability once more. The occasional glance was spared towards the tunnel they had come from, but they tried to avoid thinking about what had just transpired. Instead, they looked up at the rock wall that faced them, minds whirling to scrutinize the new obstacle in their way.

"Okay," Duo said, looking up at the ledge. It was their only avenue forward. "Was this on the map?" he asked curiously, tilting his head as he studied the high terrace. It was just about twice his height, maybe taking a few inches.

"It might have been," Wufei said quietly, turning to look at Trowa. "Wasn't there a line going across this tunnel on the drawing?"

The taller boy thought for a moment before nodding. "There was. So the map seems to be accurate, at any rate."

Silence took the boys again and they stared up at the ledge, wondering how to go about getting up. "Okay," Duo said again, clapping his hands together. "How about we boost Trowa up there?" he asked, turning to look up at the taller boy. "What'dya say, circus boy?" he asked with a grin.

Trowa nodded in agreement. "And then I'll pull you two up," he finished.

Duo and Wufei kneeled by the foot of the rock wall, holding out one hand each to work as a step for the tallest of them. Trowa put his hands on their shoulders for balance and stepped up, letting go of the support as they boosted him up. Trowa used his momentum and height to grab onto the ledge, effortlessly pulling his torso up above the rock shelf and swinging his legs up. At the end of the fluid process, he sat on the terrace without having exerted any serious effort.

"You make it look so easy," Duo remarked from down below, hands perched on his hips as he looked for the European.

"Circus boy," Trowa reminded them, looking down at his friends. "Who's next?" he invited, beckoning with one hand.

Wufei looked over at Duo, kneeling down with his hands laced together. "Ladies first," he said with a smirk.

Duo put a hand to his chest and batted his eyes modestly. "Such a gentleman," he said, stepping forward to place one hand on Wufei's shoulder and rest his foot on the laced fingers. He looked up at the rock shelf where Trowa waited. "Okay, I'm ready," he told the Chinese boy.

"Up you go," Wufei said quietly, giving Duo an extra boost as the brunette kicked off the ground. The braided boy rose up the side of the rock wall until he could reach his awaiting friend. Trowa easily caught Duo's outstretched hands, pulling him up as the brunette braced himself against the wall with his feet.

Once Duo was safely perched on the ledge next to Trowa, they both looked down at the remaining ex-pilot. "Your turn, Wu," Duo called, hanging one arm down in a mirror of Trowa's position.

Wufei took a few steps back for distance and took a running start, leaping up and grabbing the outstretched hands. With the both of them holding onto Wufei, it was a breeze to pull the Chinese boy up onto the elevated surface. All three of them now safely on the terrace, the boys took a moment to compose themselves. While the other two were brushing themselves off, Duo took one last peek towards the tunnel they'd left behind. Already a sense of security and advantage overtook him from being higher up. A soft shudder captured his body and he looked towards their new path, squinting into the darkness. It looked a little less dark down that way, and the more he stared at it, the more he realized why that was. "Hey guys! I see a light!" he exclaimed, pointing into the new tunnel.

Trowa and Wufei turned to look upon hearing the outburst, surprised to see a soft glow of barely visible illumination down the new corridor. "You're right," Trowa mused, sounding a little skeptical. "But this tunnel should lead to a small cavern based on the map, so let's not get our hopes up just yet," he advised.

Duo pouted tiredly, pushing himself up with the other two and following them into the slowly lessening darkness. The boys continued walking towards the pale light, not daring to anticipate that it was a way out. The glow became a little stronger as they went, rounding softly curved bends in the tunnel towards the source as their hope unwittingly grew. When they turned the last corner, they all stopped and stared in awe at the sight before them. It was a small cavern like Trowa had said, no bigger than a standard bedroom, but the walls were covered in huge veins of luminescent crystal deposits.

"Wow," Duo said in amazement, immediately stepping into the cavern to look at it more closely. The other two followed him in slowly as he examined one of the veins directly. They weren't huge crystals that jutted from the walls, but subtle veins of the mineral with smaller crystals that were still visible to the naked eye. There were enough of the veins and they were giving off just enough glow to cast the small cavern in a dim light, making the flashlights unnecessary for the first time since they'd fallen into the caverns. It wasn't much, but it was a breath of fresh air compared to the pitch black they had been trudging through for the past three days. "This is incredible," Duo marveled, touching one of the veins. "They're like the ones above the lake, only much bigger!"

"I've heard of bioluminescent crystals, but I've never seen any before," Wufei mused, peering closer in his own inspection of the phenomenon. The veins of glowing crystals were ethereal in the way they gave off the pale blue light, like something out of a fantasy scene. The entire atmosphere of the cave was like walking into a magical place. "They sure are something," Wufei said in reverence.

"Got that right," Duo replied, running his fingers over the rough rock wall to feel the interruption in texture from the smooth crystal. "I tell ya though, it's a nice change from those dark tunnels," he said, a wry smile on his face.

Trowa nodded in agreement. "It makes you reluctant to plunge back into the pitch black. But we have to move on if we want to get out of here," he said, sounding regretful to have to point it out.

"Yeah," Duo sighed, walking back over to the other two. "The sooner we move, the sooner we get outta here," he surmised. "Alright guys, let's boogie," he said, and the three ex-pilots moved out of the small cavern. Leaving the cave meant leaving the comfort of the softly glowing crystals behind to journey once more into the all-encompassing darkness. It wasn't a welcome transition, but they had to leave the brief place of respite in order to see the light of day again. A little of darkness would have to be suffered in the long run.

Duo stared at the ground in front of him in thought as they walked through the eerily silent tunnel, his blue eyes pensive and worried. He couldn't help the line of thought his brain was taking, and his mulling must have become audible to his two companions.

"What are you thinking of to tersely, Maxwell?" Wufei asked, glancing sideways at the brunette.

The braided boy looked up upon the query, finding it hard to muster up his usual crooked grin to dispel some of the tension and appease Wufei. He just couldn't pull one out at the moment, so he sighed and looked down at the ground again. "I just... y'know, feel bad... I kinda got us into this mess, I feel like it's my fault we're down here..." he mumbled, eyebrows furrowed as he avoided eye contact with his friends. This thought had been bothering him for some time, ever since he'd fallen into the underground lake and had been stranded alone in the dark for two hours with nothing but ideas as his company.

"Ridiculous," Wufei replied, his voice lacking its usual harshness. "Maxwell, you couldn't have known this would happen."

"It's true," Trowa added, before the braided boy could protest. "This isn't anymore your fault than it is ours. We all agreed to go mountain climbing, and we all agreed to take the unmarked path," he insisted softly, watching the other ex-pilot.

Duo sighed again, scratching the back of his head as he began to take these words to heart. It would have been one thing to hear Quatre insisting that it wasn't his fault, but if even Wufei held no ill will towards him for the events of the last few days, then maybe it was all in his head. If Duo had been at fault, Wufei would have been the first to point it out, for the sheer purpose of being bluntly honest, rather than being mean.

As if reading his thoughts, the Chinese boy spoke, nudging him in the side to bring him out of it. "Truly, we don't blame this on you," he said again, knowing it was something Duo needed to hear. Some people held the belief that he could not be tactful or sensitive, but his close friends knew otherwise.

Duo nodded slowly, looking up at his friends and offering them a tired smile. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Thanks guys," he said. After a few moments, a thought crossed his mind, causing him to laugh. It was a good feeling after so many hours in the oppressive darkness. "If anything came of this, it's that I got you two silent types to talk for once," he told them cheekily. "I don't think I've heard Trowa use so many multiple-word responses in all my life!"

"Careful," Trowa warned with a smirk, the barest hint of a friendly threat behind his usual calm voice.

"Oh no! I jinxed it!" Duo lamented dramatically, throwing an arm over Wufei's shoulder and pulling him close. "I've broken him, Wuffers! What have I done?" he wailed.

"Signed your own prescription for a kick in the ass, for one thing," the Chinese boy grunted, trying to get the dead weight of one Duo Maxwell off of him. "And _stop_ calling me that, or you know I'll hurt you," he warned.

"I call domestic abuse on that one," Duo retaliated cheekily. "I'll have to report you to the fuzz, and then they'll take you away from me," he explained, still hanging onto the other ex-pilot as they walked along, largely ignored by a casual Trowa.

"For that I can only pray," Wufei sighed, rolling his eyes.

"Hey you two, look at this," Trowa called out where he had stopped walking, interrupting their antics to bring the other two over. When they stopped beside him, Trowa shined his flashlight on a small, cracked passageway in the tunnel wall. It was small, and it looked like it would barely permit someone small and wiry, and would even then press tight. The inside was rough and jagged, like the passage was the result of a tremor in the mountain or someone trying to carve out a new tunnel. From where his light shined into the darkness, the passage rounded a tight bend and cut off sight of whatever lay on the other end. "I wonder where it leads," he murmured, trying to peer closer into the tight crawlspace.

While Trowa and Wufei were curiously inspecting the new discovery, Duo didn't like the look of the little crevice. It reminded him entirely too much of the one from his last nightmare. Even besides the reference to his bad dreams, he generally knew well enough that small, dark spaces inside caves were not to be ventured in. He was about to suggest they move on and leave the thing alone, but Wufei began to slip his arms out of the straps of his backpack.

"I'm going to check it out," the Chinese boy said in resolve, setting his pack down and grabbing the flashlight out of it. "It may lead to a better passage, and there's no hurt in taking a quick look."

"Are you serious?" Duo asked incredulously. "Have you forgotten that this place has been looping, dipping, twisting and generally crumbling out from under our feet?" he insisted.

"I'll be fine," Wufei insisted, seemingly unconcerned by the dark little niche in the wall and where it could possibly lead him. "I won't be gone long, I'm just going to take a quick peek at where it leads, that's all," he said, finding a look of trepidation and skepticism on Duo's face. "Look, Maxwell, at worst it will probably be a dead end within four or five feet."

Duo still looked like he thought this was a huge mistake, and he turned to Trowa to back him up. "Come on man, you must think this is a bad idea, right? Tell him not to go!"

But instead of instantly agreeing with Duo, the tallest of them bit his lip softly in thought, obviously torn between Wufei's confidence and Duo's mistrust of the new passage. "He could be right. It might lead somewhere that has a better chance of getting us out," he said, shrugging helplessly at the brunette's scandalized expression. "We'll never know unless we try."

"See?" Wufei said, nudging Duo. "It will _fine_. I'll be back before you know it."

"Just be careful," the braided boy said in a quiet voice, frowning at Wufei for what he thought was a very bad decision. "I don't trust this place, and if anything happens it will be hard to reach you."

"I will be careful," Wufei assured him, smirking at the other boy in an attempt to get him to lighten up. "You need to stop worrying so much, Maxwell. I'll be back," he told the other two ex-pilots, clicking on the flashlight and turning to face the niche in the tunnel wall. It was a tight squeeze, and the rock snagged softly on his clothing as he maneuvered into the small space. Generally, he knew Duo would have been a better fit for such a tight space, but it was obvious the brunette would rather chew broken glass then press himself into the little crawlspace. So Wufei left his two friends behind as he pressed further into the tight niche, feeling the rock walls pressing into him as he went. _Good thing I'm not claustrophobic, _he thought dryly.

Outside in the main tunnel, Duo and Trowa waited with their breath held, listening to the sounds of Wufei edging his way through the crawlspace. While Duo had been much more vocal about his displeasure on the situation, Trowa couldn't say he liked the plan of action. Duo was right. If anything happened, like a cave in or the Chinese boy getting stuck, it would be incredibly difficult to reach Wufei and get him out. To wrench him out of such a tight space surely would injure him even further, if something happened to render him in a bad situation. He could only imagine how difficult it would be to extract their friend without getting stuck as well. But the niche was an offer that shouldn't have been passed up, possibly leading to a better tunnel, or maybe even straight out of the mountain. They would never be sure unless they checked, and Wufei had insisted on checking.

He just hoped nothing happened...

Just as that thought crossed his mind, the two jumped in surprise when a strangled scream sounded from the niche, followed by the clatter of Wufei's flashlight as the bulb broke. Their hearts pounded from the sudden loud noise and the implications behind it. Wufei _never _screamed.

"Wufei?" Duo called in worry, shining his flashlight into the crawlspace where struggling could be heard. "What happened?"

Even though the Chinese boy did not answer, they could easily hear his frenzied breathing and the sound of his clothes catching loudly on jagged rock, the noises coming closer as he frantically pushed his way out of the dark niche. Within record time, he stumbled out of the crevice, nearly falling backwards as the resistance of the tight space was relieved. Duo just barely caught the other boy as he emerged, shocked and fearful to find the Chinese boy shaking under his steadying hands. His clothes were frayed and ripped slightly from the rough rock walls, and his hands, arms and face were spotted in small scratches that were beading with fresh blood. For a few moments, Wufei just gasped for air, shaking and swaying.

"What happened, man? Are you okay?" Duo asked in concern and shock, unused to seeing the usually composed pilot so fraught with distress. But the other boy merely shook his head, craning to look over his shoulder at the niche in the wall, as if it would come after him any moment.

"Wufei, what happened? You have to talk to us," Trowa insisted, setting a hand on the Chinese boy's shoulder and causing him to jump. Wide, coal black eyes turned to him, not completely focused in their shock and fright.

"C'mon Fei, what was it? What did you see?" Duo asked in a worried voice, drawing the attention of that disturbed gaze to him. Something seemed to click in those black eyes, and Wufei leaned forward shakily, grabbing a hold of Duo's sleeve in a tight, trembling grip. His mouth opened to speak, but nothing emerged, unable to render his experience into words. Duo and Trowa both leaned forward to hear the whispered words that were slowly starting to find voice. "What is it? Fei, what happened?" Duo asked, setting a hand over the one that was gripping his shirt.

Wufei took a great, shuddering gasp, his eyes still far-off, and he spoke.

"I saw it," he whispered in a hoarse voice, and something like a lead weight dropped into Duo's stomach.

"Saw what?" Trowa asked in confusion, looking back and forth between the two ashen pilots, because he seemed to be out of the loop. "What did you see?"

Wufei's grip around the braided boy's sleeve trembled, his knuckles bone white from the force.

"_The eye."_

Duo swallowed thickly at the whispered description, staring into Wufei's haunted eyes that were usually so calm and collected. An image flashed through his mind, of a single red eye with a slit pupil.

"Let's get him out of here," Trowa interjected softly, looking worried for the state Wufei was in. "He's not making any sense and he keeps looking back at the crag."

"Yeah," Duo whispered distractedly, glancing back at the crevice once more himself. A shiver ran up his spine at the dark crawlspace, and he gently nudged his startled friend in their original direction. "C'mon Wu, let's go," he told the other boy, who let himself be guided further up the passage by his two friends. They led the quiet Chinese boy until the crevice was safely out of sight, putting them all a little more at ease. As they put more distance between them and the niche, Wufei's shaking began to lessen, and his steps became a little more sure-footed with the increase in lucidity. At this point, Trowa stopped them and had Wufei sit down, fishing the first aid kit out of his backpack and handing it to Duo. Trowa continued to search his pack, taking stock of what supplies they had left and how long it would last them. The situation was not looking good.

The tallest of them sat back on his heels and sighed, rubbing the back of his neck in a weary manner as he addressed his friends. "Since we've lost a flashlight, it's more important than ever not to get separated," he said, looking over at the other two.

Duo nodded quietly as he applied disinfectant to a sterilized cloth. "Yeah, if someone gets cut off from the rest without a light, we're in deep shit," he surmised, starting to clean out the scrapes and cuts Wufei had acquired during his struggle within the crevice.

"Wufei?" Trowa said, garnering the attention of dark eyes. "Are you alright?" he asked, eyebrows furrowed in concern.

Wufei took a shaky inhale and nodded, forcing himself to speak. "I am fine now," he said in a slightly wavering voice, watching as Duo cleaned the cuts on his left arm. In the ten minutes that had passed since the fright, his mind had stopped reeling so much and he could think rationally once more.

"So what happened in there?" Trowa asked once more.

"I honestly don't know," the Chinese boy said in a near whisper, looking up at the taller boy with confusion. "I saw... something, I don't know what, and I just... I _lost _it. I dropped the flashlight and it went pitch black, and I couldn't get out of there fast enough," he summed up, still seeming unsure of it himself, like it had all been a dream within the crevice. "I don't know if it was my imagination or maybe an animal..." he trailed off.

"Well, you said something odd when you came out," Trowa told him, garnering Wufei's attention once more. "You said you had seen... an eye, or something," he said.

"_The _eye," Duo corrected quietly, moving on to clean the cuts and scrapes on Wufei's face.

"Ow!" Wufei exclaimed, backing away from the cloth as his nose scrunched up. "Be a little more careful," he chided.

"I am being careful!" the brunette rebuked, pulling Wufei back over so he could continue cleaning a cut on the other boy's forehead. "I can't make hydrogen peroxide hurt less, you know, I'm not magic," he grumbled, carefully swiping some dirt out of the cut.

"Sorry," Wufei replied, turning back to Trowa with a confused look on his face. "I don't remember saying anything about an eye, let alone seeing an eye."

"Maybe you were just in shock," Trowa finally suggested, shrugging his shoulders against the unnerving situation. "You were pretty shaken when you managed to get out, and you weren't making much sense," he added, watching as an unusually quiet Duo opened up a band aid and carefully pressed it to the cut above Wufei's left eye, which was larger than the others. The brunette seemed to be in an odd funk now as well, and he felt the worry for his friends building. This place was doing bad things to them all.

"I suppose so," Wufei replied slowly, absently rubbing all the itchy scrapes along his arms. Most of them were just reddened and had already dried over with tiny amounts of blood. There were only a few that warranted band aids, and Duo had already cleaned them all and covered them.

"All set, buddy," the brunette told him, smoothing one last band aid over a scrape on the other boy's shoulder.

"Thank you, Maxwell," Wufei told him appreciatively, flexing his arm to carefully stretch out the adhesive bandage on his left elbow while Duo packed up the first aid kit. "We should keep moving," he added, looking at the other two as they stood up.

Trowa nodded in agreement, holding a hand out to help the Chinese boy stand. Wufei accepted the offered hand and pulled himself up with help from the taller boy, brushing the dirt off of his clothes. A run of fingers over his hair had them come away tangled in a thick cobweb, making Wufei scowl and shake the offending substance off of his hand.

"Well, let this be a lesson to us," Duo said as they began walking once more. "No more nooks and crannies," he mumbled, glancing sideways at Wufei with a worried look.

"I can agree to that," Wufei replied calmly, although the confidence in his voice could not mask the still haunted edge to his eyes. Duo and Trowa had no choice but to take notice of this, and it made them wonder how much of whatever happened had been in Wufei's imagination and how much had been real. While the dark could play tricks on the brain, there had been a few disturbing instances in the caves already, so there was no telling what had happened in that dark crevice. Either Wufei's mind had been playing tricks on him, or his mind had already blocked it out.

In the silence that had followed for several minutes, Duo stopped suddenly, alerting the other two with his abrupt halt.

"Duo? What is it?" Trowa asked, looking curiously at the pensive look on the brunette's face.

"Didn't you guys feel that?" he asked quietly, as if raising his voice would scare it away. Not knowing what 'it' was, the other two shook their heads. "I felt a breeze," Duo whispered, staring into the darkness in front of them. He whipped his head around to look at the other two, who had matching expressions of shock and tentative hope. "A breeze!" he repeated, just as another soft draft brushed over the group so they all felt it. "Come on!" he said.

With the possibility of escape spurring the suddenly excited ex-pilots, they continued up the steadily steepening tunnel, their footsteps falling along the rock and stone faster and faster. The source of the draft was coming closer, as the teasing hints of breeze became stronger the further up they went. Even if it weren't for the breeze, the increasingly upwards-facing path would have been a sign of hope in itself, leading them closer to the top of the mountain, or even ground level. They had wandered so far and wide in the secluded tunnels that they could emerge in a spot that was far away from where they had originally fallen in. The trick was finding the way out.

"There!" Duo pointed in excitement, drawing attention to the new cavern they had just entered. It was larger than the one with the crystals had been, with a much higher ceiling that sloped up into a dome shape. On the far end of the cavern were two more tunnels that led elsewhere in the system of caves, but that was not what had drawn their interest. High up on the north wall, almost at the top of the cavern, was a hole in the rock that revealed none other than real daylight. It was much like the hole they had originally fallen through, the sides of that particular cavern had been smooth, lending no opportunity to climb. The walls in here were craggy and rough, with the potential for footholds and maybe a climb out.

"Oh god, daylight has never looked so good," Duo whispered with a shaky grin, looking at his companions with hope in his eyes. All Trowa and Wufei could do was nod in response, too shell-shocked by the sight of a potential escape from their dark prison. They startled out of their funk when Duo marched right up to the wall, testing various rocks and indents for strength. He took the climbing gloves out of his pocket and began to pull them on, tightening the grips with determination.

"What are you doing?" Trowa asked, eyebrows furrowed.

"What's it look like?" Duo shot back with a smirk, a wild gleam in his eye. "I'm goin' up a fuckin' wall!" he told them, wedging his boot into a small foothold about two feet off of the ground and hoisting himself up.

"You're just going to free climb?" Wufei asked in exasperation, gesturing to the opening that was at least fifteen feet off the ground. "You do know that if you fall from up there you're going to break your neck, right?"

"Guys," Duo said, letting go with one hand so he could turn around to look at them, entirely serious. "How else are we gonna get out? We can't assume we'll find another, more convenient opening somewhere else. We _have _to take this," he told them firmly, breaking into a grin. "Besides, I have experience! Remember when I was chased up a cliff by Ozzies?" he reminded them, earning dubious looks from Trowa and Wufei. "Look, I've scaled many a wall in my day. Once I get up there, I'll make a rope out my blanket and sweater and you guys can shimmy right up! No problem, right? So stop worrying!"

The other two ex-pilots watched on in worry as Duo began to scale the rock wall, finding foot and hand holds easily and making his way further and further up. Duo was a skilled climber, but that was not in question. The wall he was scaling eventually sloped in towards the ceiling, meaning the climb would get much more dangerous before he reached the opening that lead to the outside world. A fall from that height would surely injure him enough to make it much harder getting out.

But it was too late to argue, since Duo had quickly made it fifteen feet off the ground at that point. He had reached the part of the wall that started to slope backwards, meaning he was no longer going straight up, but was transitioning towards actually climbing on the ceiling. He was not parallel with the ground, by any means, but it was getting much harder to keep himself up on the wall. His weight was no longer supported by his feet in an upright position, but now he could feel gravity trying to bring him back down to the ground.

But the opening was almost there, if he could just reach out he would be able to grab the ledge...

A ragged gasp of alarm left his throat when Duo felt his feet slip out of their hold, and he had just enough time to reach out with his other hand and grab the crumbling ledge. Bits of rock and dust fell to the ground from where his boots had lost their grip, and now Duo dangled from the hole some twenty feet off the ground, supported only by his arms. "Fuck," he swore softly, feeling his heart as it tried to pound its way out of his ribcage.

"Maxwell!"

"I'm fine!" Duo called back, legs curled up under him like a kitten dangling from its mother's jaws. He didn't dare crane his head around to look at his worried friends, afraid that he would lose what was left of his grip and plummet to the ground so far below. "I'm fine," he repeated in a slightly calmer voice, trying to relax himself. He began to wiggle and shift, getting a better hold on the ledge and causing more loose pebbles and dirt to fall. There was nothing under his feet for purchase, so he grit his teeth and began to haul himself up, with just the strength of his arms. With some hard work, he managed to haul his torso up and out of the hole. He almost stopped in shock when a cool breeze brushed the bangs out of his flushed face, unable to recall the last time he'd felt the wind on his skin, having forgotten how wonderful it felt.

Duo struggled the rest of the way out, feeling rocks and small boulders shift under his weight as he emerged fully into the outside world. He had emerged onto a stone terrace formed by many loose rocks and boulders. As far as he could tell he was on the mountain range still, but this part was made mostly of loose footing instead of a stable mountainside. For a moment, he just stayed on the ground, rocks digging into his skin and sweat coating his back. All he needed was to feel the wind on his face, and see the plains stretching away across the countryside. His eyes closed for just a second to take it all in.

And then it was back to business. Duo sat up and turned to face the hole he had crawled out of, looking down at his friends far below. "Jackpot!" he called to them, causing their faces to bloom with relief and excitement. "Just gimme a second to make a rope, and I'll haul you two out of there!" he promised, taking his backpack off and pulling the blanket out from within.

"Well hurry up, or you'll breathe up all the fresh air before we get there!" Wufei called up, the relief audible in his voice.

Duo grinned to himself and took the pocket knife out of his back pocket, flicking it open to slice through the material. The brunette held the knife in his teeth as he took both ends of the blanket and pulled them apart, the loud sound of fabric ripping greeting his ears. He did this several more times, working the blanket into six strips that were each about a foot wide and six feet long. Duo began to tie these together, tugging hard on the knots to make sure they were as tight as possible and would not slip out from their hold. At the end of his efforts was a rope made from the shreds of his blanket, he took the end to secure it somewhere.

All he could think of to do was wedge the end of the rope under a heavy boulder, struggling with the big rock until he managed to cover the rope with it. From there, he wedged in smaller rocks until the fabric was thoroughly trapped within the pile. "That should do," the brunette said in an exhale of breath, gathering up the loose end and hurrying back to the hole. "Alright guys," he called down, tossing the length of rope down into the cavern. "Haul up!" he told them.

Down below, Wufei and Trowa glanced at each other. They were excited to get out, but there was no use rushing and drawing straws now that their venue of escape was in sight. "You go first," Trowa offered, gesturing towards their way out.

"Okay," the Chinese boy replied, nodding in thanks. He headed over to the rope, taking one of the knots that was higher up and then drawing his feet off the ground. He maneuvered the fabric over one foot, wedging it down under his other shoe to support some of his weight. Wufei then looked up towards his escape, reaching up over the rope to grab a higher section. He loosened his feet just enough to let the fabric escape, drawing his feet up and then clenching them together over the rope once more. While Duo held the rope steady above him, Trowa kept a hand on the fabric from the floor of the cave, watching the Chinese boy's progress.

When Wufei finally reached the top, he took the hand Duo had offered and hauled himself out onto the rock terrace, breathing heavily and sitting up to feel the wind on his face with relief.

"How does it feel, buddy?" Duo asked with a smile, patting Wufei on the back with one gloved hand.

"Better than I remember," Wufei replied softly, eyes closed against the wind.

Duo grinned and went back to check on Trowa, who was just securing his hold on the rope when something down on the ground caught the brunette's eye. Duo squinted a little and leaned his head down so the light wasn't in his vision so much, trying to decipher what it was he'd seen in the shadows. His eyes widened immediately. "What the fuck-? Trowa, climb!" he yelled down, his heart pounding in fear.

Trowa quickly looked behind him to spot whatever it was Duo had seen, his heart stopping at the sight of a dark figure in the shadows of the far tunnel. "Shit," he whispered, turning his head up to continue upwards.

Outside of the caves, Duo was bunching his fingers into the fabric of the ruined blanket, hauling Trowa up little by little as the taller boy climbed. "Wufei! Help me!" he cried, just as the Chinese boy took the slack of rope from Duo to pull as well. They worked together in harried movements to heave the rope up, occasionally having to fight the fabric as it snagged on jagged rocks. Because of their combined efforts, Trowa was scaling the distance twice as fast as Wufei had been. But when Duo peered into the cavern once more, his heart nearly beat out of his chest upon sight of the dark silhouette standing right underneath Trowa, the head tilted upwards and looking at the vulnerable ex-pilot. "Fuck!" he swore, hauling the rope up the last bit of distance until he could reach down.

Trowa wasted no time in grabbing onto the outstretched hand, almost fumbling the grip in his haste to get away from the entity below him. Wufei was also reaching down, and Trowa stretched out with his remaining hand to grab onto the Chinese boy so they were both pulling him up. But a strangled yell of alarm left his throat painfully when something grabbed onto him. "Something's got my ankle!" Trowa exclaimed, trying to kick whatever it was off while Duo and Wufei struggled to hoist him up. The European winced when he felt claws dig into his skin through the thick material of his jeans, blood seeping from the punctures the more he struggled.

"I've got it!" Duo exclaimed suddenly, reaching out for one of the loose rocks perched near the edge of the opening. "Trowa, duck!" he yelled, pushing the wedged rock out from under a larger one.

Trowa did as he was told, ducking his head into his arms protectively and swinging himself forward, feeling the rush of air pass behind him as a rock tumbled down into the darkness. Whatever had his ankle relinquished its hold when he heard the projectile collide solidly, and a strangled cry of fury echoed throughout the cavern.

With the opposing pull gone, Wufei and Duo used one last burst of strength to pull Trowa up and out of the hole, where he scrambled onto relatively solid land. The sounds of something angry could be heard below, and Duo made another reflex decision on impulse, kicking one of the larger rocks loose. The chain reaction this set off led to more rocks and debris spilling down into the cave, and the earth that had previously been supported above them began to slide down towards the opening. He jumped back in fright and fell on his butt when something dark rushed up towards him, but it was stopped by the slide of rocks piling securely over the opening and sealing it shut for good.

But that was not the end of it. While Duo's quick thinking had shut away that _thing _in the cave, it had also knocked loose a lot more rocks than he'd wanted. That much was evident when someone hauled him up from behind just in time to avoid a boulder smashing his leg. "Come on!" Wufei urged them, as the looming mountainside released a surge of rocks upon the boys.

The three ex-pilots stumbled down the mountainside of strewn rocks, trying not to break their ankles on the way down while avoiding the landslide above them. Duo was so focused on not falling, that it surprised him when Wufei lost his balance over a loose rock and began to fall down the hillside. "Wufei!" he called in alarm, trying to keep his balance in a sea of shifting earth and rock. It didn't work so well, because Trowa went down next, and Duo couldn't even get his mouth open before his world pitched sideways while a fiery pain blossomed in his ankle.

The world turned upside down as rock and sky switched places over and over, until stars erupted behind his eyes and he could feel a sea of rocks falling on top of him on the way down. Merciful blackness stole him away from the fury and chaos, and all went dark.

_End Chapter 5_

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_

_Damn... _I mean, _damn! _Just writing that got my adrenaline pumping, like _I _was the one falling down the hill in an avalanche!

And I kept meaning to end it at certain places, but I kept going, and now this is the longest chapter we've seen so far, by a good 1600 words and four pages! Hell, man, I feel like I did good on this one, and I hope you guys liked it! I hope I didn't miss any spelling or grammar, cause I'm kind of rushing the proofreading since I have work real soon.

Next chapter will be the last!


	6. Lingering Whispers

Water Voices

Chapter 6: Lingering Whispers

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Please read author's note at the bottom.

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"_And when the worrying starts to hurt  
and the world feels like graves of dirt  
Just close your eyes until  
you can imagine this place, yeah, our secret space at will."_

"_Shut Your Eyes" – Snow Patrol_

* * *

He felt calm, like he was floating somewhere on a vast sea and being gently rocked on the endless waves. His heart, which had been racing irregularly for so many hours previous, had slowed down and matched sync with these soothing motions, beating to a regular tempo. He felt the stress, the anxiety, and the fear simmering down into a pleasant feeling in the pit of his stomach. It was the first time in a long while that Duo could remember feeling peaceful, without the air of dread and caution hanging over his head like a despondently heavy mist.

He was so calm, so tranquil, that he was having trouble remembering what had gotten him so stressed out in the first place. The serene feeling battled with a need to know where he was and what was going on, despite the feelings telling him to just keep sleeping. Curiosity won out, and his eyes opened as if he were coming out of a fog, trying to place himself among a map of unknown features and feelings.

The first thing he became aware of was a phantom pain in his body. He felt like he was feeling a whole range of sensations second hand, like they had been watered down from what he should rightfully be experiencing. Ghosts of aches and bruises littered his body like pinpoints that had been lost in the fog, a shadow of something that had or hadn't happened. He couldn't be sure, didn't even know what it was that he was feeling the results of.

The next thing he noticed was that his body was walking of its own accord. Duo looked around in interest, a calm, hazy sort of curiosity, just accepting the fact that he was going somewhere and his mind was along for the ride. But he still felt that pleasant rocking sensation, like floating on waves in the middle of the ocean. The long corridor he was walking through was dark, made of rock and stone and shielded by the outside light, wherever that was, feet or inches or years or centuries away. It was like an underground canyon, and he was at the very bottom. Some height above him, there was a long ledge on either side, a great vantage point for anyone who happened to be above.

When Duo looked down again, he found himself no longer alone. His friends were walking beside him, Wufei on his left and Trowa on his right. As he looked back and forth between the two, they each looked at him in turn, calmly, without a word, and continued walking. Duo didn't question whatever was happening, just matched pace with his friends along the extensive, lonely tunnel. They were heading towards a cave mouth where faint traces of light could be seen, just barely. Duo hadn't noticed it before, but now he felt a sense of calm elation as that light became closer.

Just before the mouth of the cave, Duo stopped, feeling eyes burning into the back of his skull in an intense gaze. He looked around, eyes trailing along the matching cliffs towering over him. His calm stare wandered through the darkness, until he found a figure far above. He felt a strange sense of tranquility wash over him, even as he matched gazes with the figure. It was a body made purely of pitch black with a faceless gaze, watching him intently as shadows writhed around its feet from an invisible wind. Duo stared at the blank face for what felt like an eon, the distance between them stretching centuries just as much as the physical feet. The strange thing was the fact that there was no danger in the air. There was a cold resentment in that faceless stare, like he was out of reach, but the being didn't like it.

"Duo."

The brunette turned to look at his friends, who were paused as well some feet ahead and beckoning him. He took one last look over his shoulder at the being of shadows, before facing forward once more and falling into stride with Trowa and Wufei. Together they closed the distance to the cave mouth, stepping out of the darkness until light enveloped his vision, a warm sensation pulling him into a state of haze that faded away into nothing.

* * *

The world came back to him in shattering pulses to his battered body, causing Duo to jerk awake with a gasp of pain, his sore muscles seizing up under the sudden movement and leaving him smarting. "Ooohh," he groaned, moving slowly to ease his body out of the painful bind it had wound itself into. His muscles quivered with tension as he slowly sat up. The attempt ended up being far more effort than it was worth, so he collapsed back into the pillow with a sigh.

...pillow?

Blue eyes shot open in surprise as that thought finally hit him, and Duo _really _looked around this time, realizing he was in a hospital room. The glaringly white and sterile environment had never looked so appealing before, coming from those seemingly endless hours in the dark abyss of the mountain cave. Everything was bright and open, and the cracked window was letting in a spectacular feeling breeze. The small hospital room was quiet and empty, save for himself, with no visible sign of his friends. He wished he could move more than a few painful inches, because he really wanted to find out where Trowa and Wufei were being treated. In fact, he was surprised either Heero or Quatre wasn't hovering over him-

Ah, speak of the devil.

The door to the room opened, revealing a blonde young man shuffling in backwards while holding something in each hand and keeping the door propped open with his body. They appeared to be cups of coffee, faceless containers that suggested they were from the hospital cafeteria.

"Quat, baby, you're a sight for sore eyes," Duo called in a scratchy voice, drawing the attention of relieved blue eyes.

"Duo, it's good to see you awake. How are you feeling?" the blonde asked, stepping out of the doorway to approach his friend in the hospital bed.

"Very. _Very_. Sore," Duo mumbled tiredly, letting his eyes close against the painful aching of his body. "Is Heero here too?" he asked.

"How did you know?"

"Unless you're going to introduce me to an imaginary friend who has a caffeine problem, I figure you wouldn't need two cups of coffee at once," the brunette teased softly, cracking one eye to grin up at the blonde. "How are Wu and Trowa?" he asked in concern, unable to rest until he knew the condition of his friends.

"They're fine," Quatre assured with a smile. "Like you, they're bruised and slightly broken in a few places, but it's nothing serious. You're all going to be fine," he told the brunette.

"Good," Duo murmured softly. "What's the damage?"

"Well, for you, a broken leg, some minor fractures on two of your ribs, and some bruises that will last you a while," Quatre said good naturedly. "We found you guys half buried in a rock slide, so it's a wonder you got away with what you did."

"So that's where those rocks went," Duo said with a tired smirk, earning laughter from Quatre.

"Yeah, you found them," the blonde said, smiling down at his friend. "Get some sleep Duo, you're pretty banged up and you need rest. Just know that you, Trowa and Wufei are all safe and you guys are home. You had me worried, but you can tell me all about your adventures when you wake up," he teased softly, brushing the bangs out of the brunette's face.

"Alright," Duo sighed reluctantly, letting his eyelids flutter closed once more. He could already feel the pull of sleep, and conceded that even though he just woke up, he could definitely use some more rest. Besides, Quat was here, Trowa and Wufei were okay, Heero was somewhere nearby, and he wasn't in those godforsaken caves anymore.

* * *

A few days into their recovery, with the three healing up nicely and more critical patients being brought into the hospital, Duo was moved into a room with his friends. Thankfully for all three patients, there hadn't been an immediate demand for details of what happened in the caves. This gave Duo a chance to bring up something that had been plaguing his thoughts ever since he woke up in the hospital bed. "Hey, guys, what are we gonna tell Quat and Heero?" he asked hesitantly after having limped over to sit by their beds.

"Well, that depends on how insane we want them to think we've become in the caves," Wufei replied, a trace of anxiety in his eyes despite the casual tone of voice. "Do we want to leave it at a simple wandering through darkness for a few days, or try to tell them about... that thing?"

Duo shuddered at the memory, playing with the cast on his arm and trying not to think about it too in depth. He looked up, wanting to hear from the quietest of them. "What do you think, Tro?"

The taller boy, with arms crossed over his chest, had a mulling look on his face, since he'd been pondering the situation for quite some time himself. "Well, if we do tell them the whole story, we might want to wait until we're fully healed," he suggested, shrugging one shoulder.

Duo and Wufei looked mildly confused, because they knew it was a valid suggestion, they just didn't know for what reason. "And why is that?" Wufei finally asked.

"So we're guaranteed to get away when they come after us with straight jackets."

The other two remained silent for a long moment, slowly absorbing the statement. Duo finally gave a great rush of breath, somewhere between a groan of pain and a laugh, as he rubbed wearily at his eyes. "Lord, I'm having heart failure. Trowa made a funny," he wheezed, chuckling slightly under his breath in effort to control himself. After a few moments, he straightened up and composed himself. "But Trowa's right," he said, the humor draining from his voice as his smile fell. "If we tell them what happened, they'll probably think we went mad down there. Even if they don't ship us off to the psych ward, the guys will always look at us funny and question our sanity."

"Anyone would," Wufei said wearily, earning a nod from Trowa. "So it's agreed?" he asked, looking at the other two ex-pilots.

Duo nodded as well, a grim look on his face. "Agreed. We won't tell them."

"We carry it to the grave," Trowa said in an eerie voice.

"Now that's a little dramatic," Wufei told him with a smirk. Duo was laughing, while Trowa just looked amused more than anything. "Barton, I didn't know you knew how to be funny," the Chinese boy teased.

"I have my moments."

"Come on Wu, he's a clown, he has to be funny!" Duo protested with a grin.

At that, Wufei's face contorted subtly in amusement before he responded. "Funny as a heart attack," he said drolly, causing the braided boy to burst out laughing.

"Ow ow ow my ribs!" he gasped, wrapping arms around his chest as if that would provide relief to the fractures. He couldn't help but laugh at that as well, struggling for a breath through his mirth. "You guys stop making jokes, it's not fair!"

* * *

When Wufei woke up that night, it was because he'd flung himself upright into a sitting position and shocked his body out of sleep. His heart was beating angrily against his ribcage, enough so that he could feel it in his throat like it was trying to climb out. He took a shaky breath, running a hand over his hair to smooth back the strands that had struggled loose during his uneasy sleep. Wufei was about to lie back down and attempt to avoid any further dreams, until he noticed someone else was up.

Duo was sitting in the wide window sill of the hospital room, staring out the window in a way so the moonlight illuminated his features in a ghostly manner. At first it seemed as if the braided boy was unaware anything was amiss, but Wufei paused when he spoke, eyes never leaving the window. "Do you have nightmares too?" he asked softly, because Trowa seemed to actually be sleeping and he didn't want to take that away from him.

For a brief moment, Wufei considered just lying back down and going to sleep, but there was no point in pretending he hadn't just woke up in a cold sweat. He took a quiet breath before he spoke, keeping his voice low. "I see those caverns every time I close my eyes. I'm back in those dark tombs in my dreams," he admitted.

"And do you see it?"

Again, the Chinese boy would rather just not answer and go back to sleep, to avoid the entire conversation. Talking about it seemed like it would give it credence, give life and a way into the waking world. But it was already there, creeping at the back of their minds without fail. He looked down at the blankets, realizing his knuckles were white from where they gripped the cheap hospital issue fabric. "It's like it followed us out," he whispered, eyes hard and faraway from the present.

An ironic smirk appeared on Duo's face, and he finally turned to face the other ex-pilot with a weird expression. It was both thoughtful and dangerous, a look Wufei hadn't seen on Duo since the war, and it didn't sit well with him to see it back in place. Duo saw his expression and the smirk stretched just a little, showing a flash of teeth through slightly parted lips. Without a word, he turned back to the window to continue gazing out into nothing, making it clear he did not expect to sleep tonight.

Wufei felt a shiver run up his spine as one more thought of the caves passed, and he slid back under the covers without a sound. After a few moments of silence and staring at the ceiling, he felt his eyelids flutter and start to slide shut. It was a relief to fall back into rest, but he knew it wouldn't be peaceful for long. The images would come back without fail, probably to wake him up in another few hours.

But he would take what he would get, if only to stay sane.

* * *

"Maxwell, they gave you those damn crutches for a reason, use them!"

"Don't you preach to me until you get your arm back in the sling, Fei."

"I don't _need _my arm to walk!"

"And I don't _need _my leg to put it where the sun don't-"

"Both of you shut the hell up," Heero interrupted carelessly. "Chang, get your arm in the sling. Maxwell, use the crutches before I break your other leg," he told them, earning glares from both men. He did note the fact that they cooperated, however stubbornly. Heero rolled his eyes. "I pity the doctor that had to take care of you two."

"Hey," Duo interjected sternly. "I'm a _good _patient," he insisted.

"If by 'good,' you mean driving the nurses and doctors insane, then sure, you're the perfect patient," Wufei scoffed, rolling his eyes skyward.

"Like you're the star example of well-behaved and easy to work with," the braided boy shot back, smirking at the warning look Wufei gave him. "Refusing to eat the food? Trying to do your katas with a broken arm? Oh yeah, you're just the picture perfect imageof a good little patient! Oh, and let's not forget scaring the nurse with your scary-tough-guy-stare!"

"You little brat, I'll take that braid and strangle you with it!" Wufei snarled, a slight blush on his face from the unwelcome comments. Heero and Quatre hadn't known about those parts, now the blonde was shooting him a dirty look for causing the hospital staff trouble.

"Promises promises, Wu," the braided boy said flippantly, and most definitely would have physically shrugged off the threat if he weren't supporting himself on crutches.

"I was well behaved," Trowa said in a calm voice, glancing innocently over at the other two injured boys.

"You strong silent type, you were making all the women blush!" Duo accused with a wild grin. "Don't go acting like you're some saint!"

"Trowa, I never knew you were such a ladies man," Quatre said in a teasing manner, laughing at the Heavyarms pilot.

"I'm a _gentleman,_" the taller boy insisted, earning laughter once more.

* * *

"So Duo, did any of your things live through the swim?" Quatre asked after they had brought the three home from the hospital. Quatre insisted that they at least come to his place for dinner, so they could relax and have a good meal.

"Nothing but my music player," the brunette replied as he dug through the dirty backpack. "My phone's whacked for sure. The screen is messed up and the sounds are warbled. My camera is definitely dead... hello, what's this," he mused, opening up the hatch for the memory. "Hmm, I wonder if the card is okay?" he mused, taking out the memory chip and observing it curiously.

"Well hey, I'll bring out my computer and we can see if it works," Quatre suggested, leaving the room to go get the laptop from his study.

Duo looked over at the others, where Wufei and Trowa were giving him dubious looks. "I know, I know, but there are good pictures on here!" he said in defense. "I want _something_ outta all that shit we went through."

"You have a signed cast and a wasted phone, what more do you want?" Trowa asked, raising one eyebrow at the braided boy.

"Sticks and stones, Circus Boy," Duo shot back with a grin, just as Quatre emerged with his laptop and Heero came from the opposite doorway with a cup of coffee. Duo leaned back as the blonde set up the laptop on the coffee table, opening the screen and hitting the power button. "Thanks buddy," the brunette said, inviting Quatre to sit down next to him so he could see the pictures if they'd survived. Despite their earlier misgivings, Wufei and Trowa moved over to stand behind the couch, and Heero took the spot on Duo's other side.

"Here goes," Duo said, carefully putting the chip into the card reader, pushing until it clicked into place. Immediate, the computer found the external memory source and brought up a list of options. Duo moved his finger along the touch pad and selected the slideshow, delighted when the first thing that popped up was a clear picture of the fields surrounding the rocky hills.

"Wow," Quatre said in surprise. "It's beautiful!"

"Weren't you there when they found us?" Wufei asked curiously.

"Yes, but it was already dark out, and there was no moon. I couldn't see the landscape very clearly outside of the search lights," the blonde explained, eager to see more photos. Duo cycled through a few more shots of the landscape, including a shot of the mountain they had climbed. Quatre outright laughed when they came across the photo of Duo splayed out over Wufei and Trowa's laps, while the other two pilots shot the braided boy a dirty look in response to his grin.

After a few more shots, Duo hummed in disappointment. "That's about as far as I got with the pictures, after this is when we fell in," he explained. He hit the key to move forward, expecting it to loop back to the first photo in line. Instead, there was a photo of complete black. Duo's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he cycled through about ten photos that were just black. "That's weird, I don't remember trying to take pictures in the caves."

Wufei and Trowa shared and dubious look between them, unbeknownst to the others. Duo kept going until he hit something that actually had substance. There was the barely visible outline of rock walls and the edge of a body of water. "Oh, I guess that was right after I fell in the lake," Duo mused thoughtfully, but his expression was still slightly perturbed. The next photo made his heart pound wildly, and he was sure Wufei and Trowa were having very much the same thoughts.

"What's that?" Quatre asked curiously, confused by the reaction he felt from Duo.

"Uh, just a smudge on the lens," Duo said in a casual voice, eyes focused on the just barely visible shape of a dark figure in the center of the photo. He quickly went to the next picture, relieved to see it finally loop back around to the picture of green fields and the blue sky. "That camera went through a lot down there, I probably touched the lens with my fingers at some point," he hedged, abruptly changing the topic. "You want me to leave the good ones for you to look at?"

"If you would," Quatre replied. "I want that charming photo of you and the other two," he laughed.

Duo laughed as well, if only to return a little normality to the situation, and dragged the cursor to select only the valid photos. He left out all the dark ones, including the one at the very end with the 'smudge,' and copied everything else to a new folder on Quatre's desktop. He then ejected the memory card and stuck it safely in his pocket, feeling the strong urge to burn it later. He discreetly glanced back at Wufei and Trowa, both of whom were regaining the color in their faces. They met his gaze, reminding him of the pact they'd made not to speak of that thing.

He just hoped it hadn't followed them out in any other manner than in nightmares and one photo. Or were all those black photos the result of...

Duo abruptly quenched that line of thought, joining in conversation with Quatre as they decided what to prepare for food.

* * *

After dinner, Duo lay in one of Quatre's many guest bedrooms, staring up at the ceiling with a blank look on his face. The room was absolutely silent. No ticking clock on the wall, no howling wind outside, no trees rustling, no nothing. The silence was actually grating on his nerves. It reminded him of that dark cavern as he sat cold and wet in the pitch black abyss, and he thought he would've liked some noise. Otherwise when he closed his eyes to immerse himself in the dark, he was back down there all over again. Sleep wouldn't be coming tonight.

So he got up from the warmth and comfort of the bed, leaving his room and heading down the long hallway towards the family room was. He passed many doorways but only one held his interest, and it was no surprise when he emerged out onto the balcony overlooking the gardens to find Wufei and Trowa already there. Trowa was sitting on the deck, staring out through the railing at the moonlit lawns, and Wufei was perched uneasily on one of the lounge chairs.

They both looked up upon his arrival, equally unfazed to see him up and about. Without a word, he walked over and sat down on the ground, so Trowa was directly to his left and Wufei to his right. He tiredly let his body deflate, leaning his back against Trowa's just for a little human contact, to know he was in the real world and not still in the caverns. Uncharacteristically, Trowa allowed this contact without a word, only adjusting his poster and weight so they supported each other, back to back. Beckoning with tired eyes, Duo looked up at Wufei, who wordlessly left the lounge chair and sat next to the other two on the deck as well. The braided boy reached out and gave him a soft pat on the shoulder before retracting, knowing they all needed a little contact right now.

"My friends," Duo said softly, shadowed eyes gazing out to the sprawling gardens without their usual wonder. "I have a feeling we're going to have to get used to this."

_Water Voices._

* * *

A/N: Well, it's finally finished. I'm sorry for the large gap between the last chapter. Some stuff happened over the last six or so months that I won't go into, and I didn't have the means to write during this period. I've been gathering ideas that I will be typing out over the next few days now that I have the opportunity, but my first priority was to get Water Voices finished. Next I'll try to get Shadows Beneath wrapped up. After that, I think I'll stick to short stories just in case, so I don't leave anyone hanging.

I'll also try to catch up on other's uploads that I missed, and if I can, leave some reviews. Thanks for bearing with me, guys.


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